


and find your way back home

by second_chances



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Celebrate the Waking, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gray Jedi, Reylo Fanfiction Anthology, Slow Burn, Soft Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-01-06 19:43:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12217650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/second_chances/pseuds/second_chances
Summary: To end the war, Ben Solo kills Snoke. To save Ben Solo, Rey kills Kylo Ren.Free for the first time in his life, Ben wanders the reaches of the galaxy alone, searching for the balance. Once a year, Rey follows him, hoping he's found it.





	1. Prologue: Mustafar

_Prologue: Mustafar_

_37 ABY_

 

Kylo Ren dies—along with the Supreme Leader and the bulk of the First Order fleet—exactly thirty-two standard years to the day since the signing of the Galactic Concordance that marked the end of the Empire.

Now the death of a second empire would be celebrated by the galaxy at large—so much history for one day to hold.

And yet, for thirty-two years it had also held one more significance, infinitely smaller in scope, but no less important to the people who loved him. It was the day of Ben Solo’s birth.

Rey would only learn of this afterwards, but the irony was not lost on her.

Ben Solo, born and reborn on the same standard day, thirty-two years of joy and heartbreak and betrayal and sorrow filling the thousands of days between.

Kylo Ren dies. Ben Solo kills him, with a saber through the heart of his master.

* * *

Rey collapses to her knees on the cracked obsidian floor of Vader’s former palace on Mustafar, exhaustion overtaking her. Every part of her hurts, she realizes all at once, as she releases her death grip on the handle of her disengaged saberstaff. It clatters to the floor beside her, and she squeezes her eyes shut, taking stock of her wounds. There is a gash on her left thigh from the pike of one of Snoke’s guards, a shallower cut on her right bicep from a stray vibroblade another one had thrown, tiny burn marks littering her skin from fighting too close to the spitting fire of Ben’s lightsaber. And worst of all—a bone-deep, numbing ache vibrating through her whole body, pulsing inwards from the entry point, somewhere below her ribs, where Snoke’s Force lightning had struck her.

And yet, if not for Ben, her wounds would be far graver. She’d likely be dead.

She opens her eyes, and they land on the broken grey heap of Snoke’s body, still smoking in front of her. He looks ancient and frail and harmless enough now, with all the life gone out of him, all the potent power, just some dead, alien being in a gaudy gold robe. Yet even now revulsion rises up Rey’s throat like bile just looking at him, and she has to center herself in the Force to refrain from hacking at his dead body in anger. For everything he’s done, for everything he’d planned to do, for the dark thoughts he’d pressed into her mind during that final battle.

_“I feel the dark in you,” he’d crooned. “So strong. Why do you deny it? Why do you not embrace it?”_

Rey grits her teeth against the memory, just as she had against the oppressive black hole of Snoke’s Force presence, calls her saberstaff back to her hand, and, summoning all her strength, staggers back to her feet.

The wreck of Kylo Ren’s lightsaber lies on the floor beside Snoke’s body, shattered into pieces by the killing blow it struck—the inevitable result of its own instability, its wielder’s, or the immense dark power it had come into contact with, Rey couldn’t say. She stands still for a moment, staring down at it, hesitant to touch it. The cracked kyber crystal at its heart is broken into two jagged fragments, dull red in color, like dying embers, like dried blood. Yet when she reaches down to gather all the pieces of the lightsaber, depositing them carefully into the pouch strapped to her belt, she pauses with the last piece, half the crystal, and looks down at it, cradled gently in her palm. It warms to her touch instantly, a sort of _yearning_ seeping from it, a feeling that is achingly familiar to her, so often has she felt it bleeding from the crystal’s master, pouring through every crevice in the walls he’s built to hold it back, into that place in their minds where they can never, ever hide from each other.

_The crystal is the heart of the blade._

Rey closes her fingers around the crystal, the jagged edge cutting into her palm, and before she can think too much about it, places it in her pocket. No one will miss it.

* * *

Luke Skywalker lies unconscious in the antechamber exactly where Rey left him, his grey-brown robes surrounded by dead scarlet-armored guards, their bodies radiating out from around him like the beams of a star.

Rey kneels at his side, ignoring the pain that shoots up her thigh at the movement, and hovers her palm over his forehead, pausing for a moment before she wakes him. He looks so peaceful like this, more peaceful than she’s ever seen him, his usual frown lines smoothed out enough that she can see the laughter lines around his closed eyes instead, a hint of the boy he’d once been. Before he had the weight of the galaxy resting on his shoulders.

Rey’s fingers tremble as she hesitates. “I’m sorry, Luke,” she whispers, because she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to say it to him when he wakes. “Please forgive me.”

She closes her eyes, letting the Force flow through her fingers and into Luke’s consciousness, gently disentangling it from the haze of sleep in which she’d submerged it. This ability doesn’t come naturally to her—she’s never been able to perform it with the thoughtless ease of Kylo Ren, but it’s _his_ and therefore always lying dormant in the back of her mind.

Luke awakens with a start, the frown lines returning immediately as he sits up, so fast Rey has to scramble back to make room for him. He looks dazed for a moment, bringing a hand to his head as he turns, taking in the carnage the two of them had wrought together. His eyes, blue and fathomless as oceans, return to Rey, and she holds his gaze, unyielding.

“Rey, what have you done?” His voice is wary, but resigned. He already knows the answer to his own question.

“I saved you.” Her own voice is grim, but steady.

Luke drops his hand to the lightsaber clipped to his belt, as if to reassure himself that it’s still there. “You could have died. Or worse.”

Rey doesn’t have to ask what _worse_ is—she knows, she’s _felt_ it, in Kylo Ren, in herself even, teetering on the precipice of something vast and dark she can’t begin to understand. And that was why she had known Luke couldn’t be present for that last battle, why she had waited until the two of them had disposed of Snoke’s entire guard and then put him into a Force sleep, striking quickly and without thought so he wouldn’t anticipate it. He’d collapsed to the floor, safe even in the middle of his dead enemies, and Rey had stepped over them all to reach her ultimate destination, Snoke’s makeshift throne room—to face him alone.

But she hadn’t been alone, and she’d known she wouldn’t be, with a strength of conviction Luke would never have been able to understand. Which he still doesn’t understand, if his face is any indication.

“He would never have let that happen,” Rey says with quiet assurance.

A troubled expression crosses Luke’s face. _You have too much faith in him_ , he’s always telling her, equal parts reproving and wistful, the broken, betrayed man always at odds with the merciful, _hopeful_ boy whose love was strong enough to conquer the dark side, all those years ago. And Rey understands, because she’s known that war intimately since she was a child, that constant struggle between doubt and hope. She cannot judge it in someone else, and she’s never been able to begrudge him voicing those words to her when he won’t allow himself to say them to his sister.

“Where is Ben?” he says instead, this time, and maybe it means the same thing.

Rey’s gaze doesn’t falter, but her courage does, just for a moment, doubt creeping in to replace her former resolve. Her hand moves unconsciously to her pocket, to the broken lump of kyber crystal tucked safely out of sight, still warm through the fabric of her pants. She lifts her chin. “I let him go.”

Luke’s face is inscrutable as he processes that information.

“He killed Snoke.” Rey’s words are hushed in the vast, echoing obsidian hall, but fierce all the same. “I didn’t do that, Luke. _He_ did. And it wasn’t in anger. It was….” Rey’s voice falters as she struggles to put words to the memory. She’s never seen him so _burning_ , not even at his most furious, his most desperate, but this had been a different sort of fire, the emotion behind it spilling out of him and into Rey’s chest where she’d been able to _feel it_ , and though she has little experience of these things, she knows enough to recognize it for what it is—flashes of his father, his mother, even of _her_ , accompanied by a depth of feeling so staggering she’s still breathless from it. “...the light,” she says at last. “I’ve never seen the light burn in him like that.”

Luke’s eyes search her face, soaking in everything, beyond her mere words, brushing against the surface of her memories.

A tear slips free from the corner of Rey’s eye and rolls down her cheek. “I had to let him go, Luke. I couldn’t watch him live in a cage for the rest of his life...or be executed. Even after everything….” She still sees the blazing red light piercing Han’s chest, his falling body, the vivid, jagged scar up Finn’s spine, the haunted look in Leia’s eyes, the constant guilt bleeding out of Luke as if from an open wound. “Did I do the wrong thing?” she chokes out, blinking against a further cascade of tears that threatens to escape.

Luke’s face softens at once. “No,” he says hoarsely, pulling Rey into his arms. She buries her face in the rough fabric of his robe, and she can feel his organic hand stroking her hair gently, comfortingly, like she imagines a father might. “No, Rey. You had the strength to do what I could not.” And then, so soft she feels it more than hears it, a whisper into her hair. “Thank you.”

* * *

General Organa meets them in the hangar bay of the _Raddus_ once they rejoin the fleet above Mustafar. The dozens of X-wing fighters arrayed across the hangar floor look battered and battle-worn, casualties of the massive space battle fought high above the planet surface, even as Rey waged a very different sort of war below. Still, the bulk of the Resistance fleet is in better shape than three Resurgent-class First Order battlecruisers floating disabled in space, amidst the debris of several more, the rest fled to parts unknown, left to be dealt with later.

Today is for victory, although Rey doesn’t feel in a very celebratory mood as she limps down the shuttle ramp behind Luke, one hand clutched against the Force lightning burn on her stomach. Leia Organa stands just at the base of the ramp, flanked by Finn and C-3PO. She’d donned a New Republic uniform for the battle, no doubt at Vice Admiral Holdo’s insistence, standing straight and regal, every bit the princess she’ll always be. She seems to collapse into herself when she spots Rey and Luke, though, her relief palpable in the air as she moves into her brother’s arms.

Rey heads straight for Finn, and he anticipates how unsteady she is on her feet, meeting her halfway before her legs can give out, bending down to loop her left arm over his shoulder to support her injured leg, wrapping his near arm firmly around her waist. There’s a smile on his face, bright with relief, but worry lines between his eyebrows. They’re not those naive children running for their lives on Jakku anymore.

“You look a little worse for wear,” he says, keeping his tone light, even as his eyes catalogue every visible wound on her body.     

Rey tries to laugh, which comes out more as a grunt when she puts too much weight on her bad leg. “Was there even a battle up here? You look like you just stepped out of the ’fresher.”

Instead of bantering back, Finn stops and pulls her into a full hug, murmuring his relief at seeing her in one piece against her forehead. Rey sags against him, pressing her face into the collar of his yellow gunner uniform. For all her teasing, he smells like ozone and smoke and she squeezes her eyes shut against the idea of losing him to a laser cannon blast.

_There is no death, there is the Force_ , she tries to tell herself, but as always, it’s little comfort.

Instead, the memory of Snoke’s mocking voice supplants it. “ _There is no passion. What would the Jedi say, girl, if he could see into your heart as I have?”_

Rey shoves the memory away with all her might, opening her eyes to meet Leia’s over Finn’s shoulder. She wishes— _oh how she wishes_ —that she could have a moment alone with her to explain what happened, but they’re obliged to head straight for a debriefing with Resistance leadership, lest it appear they’re keeping secrets. Rey comforts herself with the thought that Luke must have murmured the basics to his sister when they embraced, and she knows that however much Ben Solo keeps himself cut off from his mother in the Force, she can _feel_ that he’s still alive and breathing.

Leia’s eyes are an unfathomable well of sorrow, but mixed in with that, a spark of hope. Despite all common sense, despite what he’s done, despite what people might think, her love for her son is deeper and stronger than all of that and _she wants him back_ . Rey cannot begin to understand that sort of abiding, unconditional love, but she gives Leia a small nod and a tremulous smile, pushing the memory of that _burning light_ she’d felt when Ben killed Snoke towards her in the Force. The general may not be a Jedi, but she’s stronger with the Force than she gives herself credit for.

She lets out a small gasp at Rey’s memory, eyes welling with tears and a sort of peaceful transcendance taking over her face. Rey feels a wave of gratitude loop back towards her, so strong it knocks her breathless.

Two hover-stretchers arrive to transport Rey and Luke, first to the bridge for their debriefing and afterwards to the medical bay. Rey protests at first, but Finn scoops her up into his arms and deposits her on the nearest one, and it feels too nice to be lying down for her to bother fighting any further. A med droid rolls along next to them as the group makes their way to the turbolift, applying temporary bacta patches to their visible wounds.

The bridge is empty of all but essential personnel when they arrive, Vice Admiral Holdo and the Resistance generals arrayed around the holotable on the command deck in anticipation of the classified information that’s about to be shared with them. Leia takes her place next to the vice admiral while Finn helps Rey back to her feet, the two of them coming to a stop beside Luke, facing the line of officers.

Luke patiently delivers the first part of the report, choosing his words with care as he describes how he and Rey fought their way into the fortress and took down Snoke’s elite guard squadron. Rey lets her gaze rove over the officers, the grim expressions on their faces, the wary curiosity in their eyes. Most of them don’t know the first thing about the Force, or even believe in it, and Rey can feel the palpable distrust that’s always rolling off of them in waves. They’ve never known what to think of Luke, the odd hermit-wizard, but they accept his help because he’s a war hero and he’s General Organa’s brother. At least they have a name for him, though it’s all but mythological to them— _Jedi_.

They have no such label to put to Rey, and therefore eye her all the more doubtfully. Yet many of them have witnessed the power she holds inside her, what she’s done in their defense, how she’s fought and bested Kylo Ren on more than one occasion. And though they cannot understand or trust her fully, they respect her, even if it’s tinged with a bit of fear.

Luke finishes recounting events as far as he knows them, attributing his absence from the battle with Snoke to his injuries rather than revealing its true cause. Rey’s anxiety spikes as her turn arrives, suddenly terrified that the officers won’t believe her. They _have_ to believe her, or Ben Solo’s life hangs in the balance. There are only a handful of people in the galaxy who know that Kylo Ren is one and the same as General Organa’s long-absent son, and none but Leia, Luke, and Finn are present in the room with her. But Force users are few and far between and, wherever he’s going, if Ben slips up and the galaxy at large is aware Kylo Ren survived the battle—well, it wouldn’t be all that hard for someone to put the pieces together.

Rey lifts her chin, summoning all the dignity she can muster when she can barely stand on her own without Finn’s support. “Snoke is dead,” she says, keeping her voice steady, unshakeable as stone. “Kylo Ren killed him. And I killed Kylo Ren.”

A low murmur runs through the room. Vice Admiral Holdo raises a hand to silence them, then folds her arms over her chest, nodding for Rey to continue.

Rey reaches down to unfasten the pouch containing the remains of Kylo’s lightsaber from her belt, handing it to Finn, who steps forward to upend it on the table. The pieces scatter, the red half-crystal landing in the midst of them, and this time there are audible gasps in the room. No one needs to ask what they’re looking at. Several of the officers turn their gazes on her, their expressions a mix of fear and wonderment. Rey stands as straight as she can, unflinching, determined not to betray the slightest hint of emotion.

Vice Admiral Holdo alone maintains an impassive expression, bordering on cynical. She purses her lips, tilting her head to one side, studying Rey. The woman is formidable—and not always in the admirable way that Leia is formidable. Her purple-pink hair clashes almost comically against the neutral tones of her New Republic uniform, so different than the formal gowns Rey is accustomed to seeing her in—but nothing about her personality encourages laughter of any variety.

“Do tell us,” she says, “why Snoke’s right-hand man would kill him.”

Rey and Luke established their story before leaving Mustafar, and now it only remains to deliver it convincingly. So much depends on it. “Snoke wanted me to join him,” Rey says, keeping her voice steely. “To replace Kylo Ren. Betrayal is the way of the dark side. Kylo Ren wasn’t going to just lay down and die, so he turned on his master. I stayed out of the fight as much as I could. Ren was victorious, but at great cost to himself. His lightsaber was destroyed, and he was wounded. It was not so difficult to defeat him after that. I’ve done it before, and untrained.” Rey raises an eyebrow, daring anyone to challenge that. Her fight with Kylo on Starkiller Base is an oft-told story among the Resistance ranks, though the details have grown fuzzier and less truthful over the years.

Holdo gives a curt nod, acknowledging that. “Could you not have captured him alive? The galaxy desires public justice for the destruction of the Hosnian system.”

Leia shifts on her feet next to the vice admiral, and though she keeps her face a careful mask, Rey can feel the fury beneath it. “I think the death of the enemy in battle is quite enough justice for them,” she says stiffly. “No need to turn the execution of war criminals into a sport.”

“Thank you, General Organa,” Holdo says dismissively. “I believe everyone present is aware of your opinions on capital punishment.”

Rey bristles at Holdo’s condescending tone, hands clenching involuntarily into fists. Luke grounds her with a calming, brief touch to her wrist. Rey grits her teeth, trying to put a leash on her temper. “I apologize, Vice Admiral,” she says, in a tone perhaps less diplomatic than is wise, “for my failure to singlehandedly defeat the Supreme Leader of the First Order and the Master of the Knights of Ren in a manner to your liking.”

Holdo scowls, Leia looks uneasy, and Rey can feel Finn’s shoulder shaking under her arm that’s looped over it. At least someone finds her insolence amusing. Rey bites the inside of her cheek, wondering if perhaps she’s spent too much time with Ben inside her head. All the same—Rey is not formally a member of the Resistance and therefore not subject to its rules of behavior.

Vice Admiral Holdo has drawn herself up to her full height and looks severely displeased, but even she is aware that Rey holds the upper hand in this situation. Rey is the one who cut off the head of the serpent—the vice admiral only damaged part of the body. To the galaxy at large, _how_ Rey managed it will be far less important than the fact that she did.

To that end, Holdo chooses to ignore Rey’s tone, unfolding her arms and saying simply, “Very well.” She turns, addressing the officer to her left. “Rear Admiral Statura, see to it that a squadron is sent down to the planet surface to collect the bodies.”

“There are no bodies.” Rey’s voice rings out, clear and strong, in the silence of the bridge. Everyone stares at her, waiting for further explanation. “We burned them,” she says unapologetically.

Holdo loses all of her military formality at this revelation, face darkening in anger. “I have allowed the two of you,” she says furiously, eyes shifting between Rey and Luke, “to act on your own accord in these matters, but _now_ —you would deprive us of the evidence of our own eyes?”

“Vice Admiral,” Luke cuts in gently, and Rey can feel him inflecting his words in the Force with a sort of calming persuasion. Most of the officers relax, but Holdo remains incensed. “I think you can agree that matters of the Force are best left to us. The dark side is...insidious. Please trust us when we say that burning the bodies was in the best interest of the galaxy.”

Silence reigns on the command deck for an extended, unsettling minute, then the vice admiral seems to realize she’s outnumbered, attempting to fight a pointless battle which she’s already lost. “Have it your way, Master Skywalker. Dismissed.” She turns her back on them, moving away to the viewport and snapping orders for the wreckage of the First Order fleet to be searched for survivors.

Rey collapses against Finn, all the adrenaline in her body rushing out, only to be replaced with pain. _It’s done_ , she thinks. The words are an exhausted whisper in her mind, aimed at the solid wall Ben hastily erected between them after he walked out of Snoke’s throne room and away from her. _You’re safe_ . There’s nothing from him in return, not even a faint shadow of an emotion. _Don’t you dare make me regret this, Ben Solo._

And then—then there’s a hint of _something_ , sorrow and remorse, guilty relief, longing, something else perhaps that she refuses to put a name to, all of it diluted as a drop of blood in an ocean, but undeniably _there_. The feeling of him, however distant, is strangely comforting in ways Rey doesn’t wish to contemplate at the moment, so she puts it out of her mind and allows Finn to help her back onto her hover-stretcher.

* * *

Rey spends the night sedated in a bacta tank, blissfully dream-free. When she wakes, it’s to the sterile white world of the medical bay. They’ve put her in a corner bed for privacy, and partitioned off the other two sides with white curtains. She blinks blearily up at the lights overhead, taking in the soft beeping of machines and soothing voices of med droids on the other side of the curtains. When she turns her head, she realizes Chewbacca is sitting at her bedside.

He leans forward immediately, asking how she feels in Shyriiwook.

Rey cracks a smile. “Like I got trampled by a bantha,” she croaks.

Chewie voices some concern that perhaps she needs another night in the bacta tank, but Rey shakes her head, sobering. “Chewie,” she whispers, reaching out for him. He takes her hand in both of his, making it disappear entirely into his fur, and tilts his head towards her, as if he knows she’s trying to make a confession.

“Chewie, I didn’t do it,” she whispers, eyes welling up with tears. “I couldn’t do it.” She doesn’t know if it’s a reassurance or an apology, and judging by the haunted, grief-stricken look in his eyes, he doesn’t either.

“ _Neither could I_ ,” he growls softly in Shyriiwook, and Rey is transported back three years. The vanishing light of a star, a black bridge over an abyss, a flash of unstable red plasma, a body falling, an anguished howl, a bowcaster quarrel in the dark, Kylo Ren collapsing to his knees. And she sees it there suddenly, at the front of his mind. _He missed Ben Solo’s heart on purpose._

Rey chokes on a sob, clutching at Chewbacca’s hands more tightly. She’d feared his anger, his disappointment in her, and instead all that flows between them is compassion and a well of deep sorrow.

Chewie frees one of his hands, reaching to pet at Rey’s hair, and she leans into his side, burrowing her tear-streaked face into his fur as she finally, _finally_ , allows herself to cry in earnest. “ _It’s what Han would have wanted_ ,” he says, the rumble vibrating through his chest, and at the words a weight lifts free of Rey’s lungs, and she finds she can breathe a bit easier.

After some moments, Doctor Kalonia makes an appearance, clucking in disapproval that Rey is sitting up, gently shooing Chewbacca out of the room, insisting that Rey needs more sleep.

“You’ll make a full recovery,” she says as she inspects the lightning scar on Rey’s abdomen. All trace of the rest of her wounds is gone after her night in the bacta tank. “This one’s going to stay, I’m afraid. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Rey runs a hand over it, grimacing, imagining its twin which undoubtedly now mars Ben’s chest. “I hope you never see its like again,” she sighs, and says no more.

* * *

When she comes to again, she’s groggy and disoriented. The lights in the medbay are dimmed so she guesses it’s scheduled sleeping hours, but there’s no chronometer in sight to confirm that.

“Hey,” a familiar voice next to her says softly, and she turns her head to see Finn now sitting in the chair Chewie had previously occupied. “You’re awake.”

Rey gives him a lopsided smile, slowly propping herself up on her elbows. “How long was I out?”

Finn adjusts her pillow so she can sit up against the headboard. “This time? Twelve standard hours.”

Rey winces at that. “What’d I miss?”

Finn resettles in his chair, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest. “Not much. Holdo’s on a rampage, as usual. Got half the fleet scouring the First Order wreckage for prisoners to take back to the Core, and the other half trying to chase down the ships that got away.” Finn shifts in his chair, looking perturbed. “Oh, and she went down to the planet surface herself. I don’t know what she expected to find.” He keeps his eyes on Rey, and they’re careful and searching, as though he’s looking for the answer to something.

She looks down, plucking at the frayed fabric of her bedsheet. “Is everyone taking watch duty over me or what?” The words are flippant, a half-joke, but when Finn’s only response is silence Rey looks up to meet his eyes again. “Finn?”

He sighs, forehead furrowing as he formulates his answer.

“They don’t trust me, do they?” Rey demands.

Finn’s eyebrows shoot up in alarm, and he shushes her, glancing over his shoulder like someone might be listening in. He leans forward, elbows braced on his knees. “Rey, we’re not guarding you for Holdo. We’re guarding you _from_ her.”

“What? Why?”

Finn looks frustrated. “It’s not—you’re not in danger. General Organa just thought it’d be best to prevent her from getting you alone. If she was inclined to try that. Hey, hey, hey.” He puts a soothing hand on her shoulder, settling her back down when she starts to get up off the bed. “Take it easy. Doctor Kalonia says you’ve gotta stay in bed for at least another day cycle.”

Rey sighs bleakly, leaning back and staring up at the ceiling. “Do they even realize what Luke and I did for them?”

Finn takes her hand in his gently, but his voice is stern. “Rey.” He doesn’t continue until she meets his eyes. “You have the gratitude of the people who matter, even if we can’t fully understand what you went through.”

Rey gives him a close-lipped smile in answer, squeezing his hand.

“Okay,” he says, sounding satisfied, then stands up, leaning down to kiss her on the forehead. “I need to comm Leia. She asked me to tell her the minute you woke up.”

“Finn,” Rey blurts out suddenly, when she’s faced with the line of his back, the scar she knows runs down the length of it even though it’s covered by his shirt and jacket. He stops short, then turns back to her slowly, his lips pressed tight together, a fathomless expression in his dark eyes.

She doesn’t want to tell him, but she cannot bear to keep it from him. She’s afraid he will look at her differently when he knows, but as he looks at her now she wonders if he _already_ knows. She could skim the surface of his mind to try to find out, to spare herself—but it would feel like a betrayal, and he’s always been next to impossible for her to read in the Force anyway—his strength of mind is staggering.

_He’s still alive_ , she could say, and that would be easier, a way to distance herself from personal responsibility. The coward’s way out. She lifts her chin instead, and looks him squarely in the eyes. “I told him to go.”

Finn doesn’t move, doesn’t even blink. “I know.”

Rey’s eyebrows furrow, her mouth already starting to form a question, but Finn stops her with quiet resignation. “I’m going to comm Leia. I’ll be right on the other side of the curtains.”

* * *

Leia Organa has circles under her eyes and looks like she hasn’t slept in days—which she probably hasn’t—but she still moves with the brisk, determined energy of a woman half her age. Rey doesn’t know how she’s still standing on two feet, let alone commanding a battleship.

She sinks into the chair next to Rey’s bed with a sigh, though, closing her eyes and not speaking for several long moments. Rey stays quiet, allowing the general what is probably the first semblance of peace she’s had in weeks.

“Did you know,” Leia says at length, opening her eyes, though her gaze is distant, fixed on the white wall. “Ben was born the day we signed the Galactic Concordance. Thirty-two years ago yesterday.”

Rey knits her eyebrows, putting this information together. Birthdays have been a foreign concept to her until recently, having never had anyone to celebrate them with. She remembers the date of her birth, had clung to that information on Jakku despite everything else she might have forgotten about her early life, had celebrated it by scrounging together enough rations to ensure she wouldn’t have to endure hunger pains on that particular day.

She can’t even begin to fathom what Ben Solo’s birthdays might have been like as a child.

“It felt so strange, to hold him outside of my body. Our emotions were so entangled...it was difficult to separate them when I was carrying him. He could feel my love, and my fear, even if he couldn’t truly understand them. I could feel his strength, his spirit. He was a fighter even then.” The ghost of a smile crosses her face. “He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever felt. And then he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever _seen_ , there in my arms, so tiny, so vulnerable. And Han and I knew, we would do _anything_ to keep him safe.”

She turns to look at Rey, and her eyes sparkle with unshed tears. “ _The brighter the light, the darker the shadow_ , that was what Luke said to comfort me, when I felt the dark reaching for my son. They’ve always been at war inside of him, from his first moment of existence, and I was helpless to understand it.”

Leia looks at her searchingly, almost beseechingly, and Rey doesn’t know what she has to give, but she offers it anyway. “I think,” Rey says quietly, “they’ve reached an armistice.”

Leia leans forward, drinking her words in, clinging to the connection Rey has with her son that allows her to know his inmost thoughts and feelings. “He’s free from Snoke,” Rey continues, “for the first time in his entire life. That gives him...a bit of peace. The dark and the light, they’re both still there, but he’s stopped trying to embrace just one and forsake the other. He’s searching for the balance.”

“And when he finds it?” Leia whispers.

“I think….” Rey hesitates. “I think he might also find the courage to come back to you.”

Leia closes her eyes and bows her head, breathing in deeply to steady herself. When she finally looks up, her eyes are dry again. “Rey, I owe you a debt I can never repay.”

Rey opens her mouth to protest, but Leia stops her by taking her hand. “You did what no one else could, and that’s why I’m so sorry that I have to ask you to do one thing more for me. For him. For the galaxy too, I suppose.” Rey gives her a questioning look, and she forges on. “This...connection you have to him—keep it open, keep it alive, keep in contact with him, whatever you have to do.”

Rey frowns. “It’s kind of a two-way thing. That requires his cooperation.”

One corner of Leia’s mouth twitches faintly, like she finds something amusing, though Rey can’t fathom what. “Oh, I think you’ll have that,” Leia says with absolute conviction. “I can feel him, in my own way, though he’s kept himself cut off from me for many years now. It’s just his life force, nothing more. But you—if you can pinpoint his location, keep track of where he is, what he’s doing, what he’s feeling...it would be a comfort to me. As a mother _and_ as a Resistance leader.”

Rey can’t argue with Leia’s logic. Even if she wanted to refuse this responsibility, she’s the only person in the galaxy who can do this. Even if she wanted to extricate herself from Ben Solo, the Force would always bring them back together. _Your destiny and mine, they’re intertwined_ is the sort of melodramatic thing Ben has been so fond of murmuring insistently into their connection for years now, and Rey doesn’t know if she believes in fate, but it seems fate—and Leia Organa—believes in her.

“I’ll do my best,” she promises.

* * *

Rey doesn’t have a moment alone to contemplate what happened in Vader’s palace on Mustafar until two standard days later, the first night she spends out of the medbay and in her own bunk. The space is so small it’s more of a closet, but at least it’s private. The _Raddus_ is currently somewhere along the Hydian Way on its journey to Coruscant, the Resistance leadership intent on establishing an interim government as soon as possible.

The war is not over yet, Rey knows this, and she doubts her part in it is over either. She’ll follow Luke’s lead in regards to how much or how little they should continue to be involved. But for now there’s just her, sitting on the edge of her bunk, elbows braced on her knees, staring down at the dull red kyber crystal sitting in one open palm. She swears the color is leaching out of it—it looks paler than before. Or perhaps her eyes are playing tricks on her.

She closes them, breathing in deeply, facing her memories at last.

* * *

Snoke, tearing into her mind without caution or pity, the excruciating agony of it making her cry out and collapse to her knees at his feet.

Kylo Ren, tall and black-robed and masked beside Snoke’s throne, the sight of him distorted through her pain-blurred vision, but she could feel his torment as well, some mix of her pain bleeding into him and something deeper, darker, that was all his own.

Snoke, taunting her, reaching for the dark in her, pulling it to the forefront, all of her anger, all of her fear, the raw untapped power that he assured her would be unmatched if she would only embrace it.

Kylo Ren, reaching black-gloved hands up to release his mask, the hiss of it unable to be heard over Rey’s gasping breaths and grunts of pain.

Snoke, too distracted, too confident in his own power, in his absolute corruption of his student, to notice what was happening right in front of him.

Rey planted her hands on the obsidian floor and lifted her chin with some effort, raised her gaze to Ben Solo’s face, the grim, mournful determination of it as he unclipped his lightsaber from his belt, and she knew in that moment that her faith was not misplaced. He was ready to lay down his life for her.

With Snoke still tearing through her mind, Rey gritted her teeth and shifted her focus to him, mustering all the light she could summon to build a wall around the part she would not allow him to get to. _This far and no further_ , she thought, and Snoke collided with it violently, the sheer force and surprise of it throwing him out of her mind and physically back against his throne.

His expression shifted from shock to rage in an instant, and before Ben or Rey could ignite their lightsabers, he’d raised a hand and the room was blinding with jagged blue light, traveling through the air so quickly it struck Rey before she could move, and then there was nothing but white-hot searing agony until it stopped.

When she came to, she was sideways on the floor, curled into a ball and panting, and she could taste blood in her mouth from where she’d bitten her tongue.

Ben had moved, placing himself bodily between her and Snoke, and he was nothing but a tall black shadow against the Force lightning Snoke aimed at him, as he angled the spitting red plasma of his blade to absorb it. Snoke was truly enraged now, and while Ben was occupied blocking the lightning from one hand, he aimed the other at a different angle, straight for Rey. Ben flung himself to the side to block that too, and it struck him square in the chest, and he went down to the floor, heavily.

There was a chilling, wounded-animal scream as he fell. It took Rey a belated moment to realize the sound was coming from her own mouth, and suddenly she was on her feet, both ends of her saberstaff ignited, leaping over Ben’s body to intercept the next wave of lightning aimed at him. It struck with such power the blades only managed to absorb the first wave, the last of it knocking her saberstaff clear out of her hands; it spiraled to the floor, disengaged.

With the green glow of her saber blades extinguished and the Force lightning gone for a moment, the vast hall was steeped in darkness, and Rey stood alone—nothing but her open palms between Snoke and her body, and Ben Solo helpless on the floor behind her. Ben Solo, Snoke’s masterpiece, his obsession of thirty-two years, and now his failure, and Rey could feel his hatred bending the very air around her, his single-minded intent to _destroy_ , not just the light in Ben, but the dark too, to rip the very breath from his body, to obliterate the very memory of his existence from the galaxy.

Snoke’s face contorted with a slow, cruel smile as he stood up and struck again, and Rey braced herself, feet planted wide, hands outstretched—and the lightning hit Rey’s palms but stopped there, a fraction of space between the energy and her skin as it twisted and curled into silvery-white balls of light beneath her trembling fingers. She took her eyes off Snoke to glance down at her own hands in wonderment. She didn’t know how she was doing it, but she could feel the power of the lightning, like a living, wild thing, and she wasn’t merely absorbing it. She had control of it, and she fixed her eyes on Snoke again, baring her teeth in a snarl, hurling his own weapon back at him with all her strength. It struck him in the chest, just where he had struck Ben, and he crumpled to the floor, his body twitching and smoking.

Rey took advantage of Snoke’s pained distraction to look for Ben. He was still on the floor just behind her, gasping, one arm clutched across his chest, and he was looking up at her with an expression of such open reverence Rey could hardly meet his eyes. She held a hand out instead, helping him struggle to his feet, calling her saberstaff back to her with the other, and together they stood side by side, lightsabers ignited, as Snoke staggered to his feet and reached for his own from underneath his golden robe, his last defense.

The fight was vicious, and it was not over quickly. Ben seemed to have recovered his strength, or was drawing strength from his own pain, as he was wont to do. He still fought with brutal, reckless swings, so terrifying to be on the receiving end of, but Rey’s terror now, fighting at his side, was all for the way his form left no room for defense.

So she became his defense, twirling the twin blades of her saberstaff in a dizzying whirl of dark-green light, leaping up and over it, ducking under Ben’s blade, blocking both of their bodies from Snoke’s when necessary. She and Ben moved together with effortless, instinctive grace, like one person in two bodies, until the combined onslaught became too much for even Snoke, and Ben’s lightsaber shattered under his hand when he finally plunged the jagged, unstable blade through his former master’s heart.

They both collapsed to the floor when it was over, gasping. Rey felt like she’d never be able to move again but a heartbeat later Ben was scrambling to her side, gloved hands frantically taking stock of her wounds even as he ignored his own. Rey winced and halfheartedly batted his hand away when he reached the gash on her thigh, but then she found her own hands involuntarily moving up to clutch at the stiff black fabric of his tunic, and Ben cradled her face in his hands, burying his mouth against her hair, murmuring her name over and over.

Rey pressed her tear-and-sweat-streaked face against his shoulder, whispering, “I’m okay. You’re okay.” She didn’t know which of them she was reassuring, and when Ben’s arms slipped around her back to hug her more tightly to him, it was exactly what she needed in that moment.

“I thought I lost you,” he choked out, the words so desperate, so raw, Rey would never again be able to deny to herself what she meant to him. This fear of loss, this reckless placing of her safety above his own, the trembling way he clutched her to him, the tenderness with which he’d murmured her name, the supernova of emotions in his chest that he was too exhausted to tamp down and hide from her—they could mean nothing else.

Rey came back to reality all at once, urgency creeping in strongly enough to overrule all other feelings. “Ben,” she said, pushing back but keeping her arms out, fingers still clutched in the fabric at his chest. “Ben, you need to go.”

He was brushing her hair back from her forehead, eyes wandering all over her face like he hadn’t heard her.

“Ben!” Rey repeated, more persistently, shaking him. His eyes snapped to hers. “There’s a Resistance blockade around this planet, but as long as the battle’s still going on, you can slip by, if you’re careful.”

He looked mystified. “What are you talking about?”

Rey gave a frustrated growl. “I’m talking about saving your life, you kriffing blasterbrain!”

His lips parted and closed, and he gave a little shake of his head, resuming stroking her hair. “You already did.”

Rey smacked his hand away from her face, her desperation to keep him safe overruling her desire to be touched. “That’s not going to mean anything if the Resistance catches you. They’re going to kill you, publicly and without mercy, and they’re going to shame your mother when they find out who you really are. You think it was bad when the truth about Darth Vader was exposed? This will be a thousand times worse. It’s not distant history she’s protecting. It’s the enemy, the very enemy she’s been fighting. You can’t let that happen. You need to stay alive, and to stay alive you need to run. _Now_.”

Ben’s eyes still rested on her face intently, but now it was more like he was trying to memorize her features, not to reassure himself she was alive but to brace himself for losing her in a different way. “I thought,” he said, his voice so quiet and low. “I’d be willing to face that end. It’s what I deserve.”

“Is that what she deserves?” Rey rejoined fiercely. _Is that what I deserve_ , she wanted to ask, but found her courage lacking.

His throat bobbed, eyelashes fluttering as his gaze roved over her face again, and maybe he’d overheard her thought, but there was no time for embarrassment.

“No, Ben Solo. You’re not going to martyr yourself to soothe your guilty conscience. You’re going to find a ship, and you’re going to fly it out of here, and you’re going to go somewhere no one knows your face, and you’re going to _live_. For Han. For Leia. For every terrible thing you’ve ever done. And,” Rey moved a hand to clutch at her chest, at the intangible place where part of him resides inside her, “for me.”

Ben nodded then, his mouth set in a line, his eyes like black fire, suddenly alight with purpose, no trace of his previous resignation in them. He reached for her hand, turning it over and pressing the bit of wrist exposed at the bottom of her arm wrap to his face, breathing in against it. “You are,” he murmured, his lips brushing her skin, and with the touch came flashes of herself as seen through his eyes, standing tall and resolute and indomitable between him and Snoke, lightning in her hands, fire in her eyes, the light of the Force spilling from inside her like a visible thing, and he was entranced still—he was unworthy to look upon her, he wanted to worship at her feet, he wanted to follow her across the universe. “And always will be.” He raised his eyes to hers. “The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Nothing in the galaxy can compare.” His words were so quiet, so awed, Rey wasn’t sure if he’d spoken or thought them. Keeping his eyes fixed on hers, he pressed his lips to her wrist in earnest, a soft kiss, a goodbye, and Rey’s heart twisted in her chest. How could she watch him walk away?

* * *

But she did watch him walk away, and she still watches him walk away in her memories, and she’s been left behind before, but this is different, because it was her choice. Her sacrifice. That should be a comfort to her. Instead it feels like there’s a hole in her chest.

Rey draws her legs up onto her bunk, curling onto her side, clutching the kyber crystal tight in her hand and pressing her wrist to her cheek until she falls asleep.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The soundtrack for this fic is [here on spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/greysecondchances/playlist/4HwkCxQkvWINMXPC3hWma0) if you'd like to listen to it. The songs are in chronological order to match the chapters and are divided roughly evenly between each chapter.
> 
> My characterization of Amilyn Holdo is based on unreliable spoilers and my own imagination since this was written before Leia Princess of Alderaan came out.
> 
> The prologue starts three years after the events of TFA, and I'm leaving it purposely vague what's taken place during that time period in the hope that this fic might still SORT OF fit in with canon post-TLJ.
> 
> I want to thank all the mods of the [Reylo Fanfiction Anthology](https://reylofanfictionanthology.tumblr.com/) for organizing Celebrate the Waking, and specifically [South](http://southsidestory.tumblr.com/) and [Viv](http://shelikespretties.tumblr.com/) for helping me get this story publication-ready.
> 
> Please leave a comment if you can! I've poured my heart and soul and actual tears and three months of my life and absolutely all of my love for Ben Solo into this fic, and it's very dear to my heart.


	2. Shu-Torun

_Shu-Torun_

_One standard year later_

 

“Well, Teesix, there it is,” Rey says as she brings her borrowed Ghtroc 690 out of hyperspace and into view of the red-black Mid-Rim planet. “Your new home.”

The little slate-grey BB unit gives a dismal beep, and Rey takes one hand off the flight controls to pat its dome-shaped head. “Ben’s not so bad,” she says diplomatically. “Maybe you’ll like him.”

Teesix makes a noise of indignation, rolling away from her. Rey sighs. “You’re not being punished, Teesix. You’re doing General Organa a favor. You should be proud that she picked you.”

A lot of people might laugh to hear her appealing to a droid’s vanity, but Rey has seen too vast a range in the personalities of droid units in her life to believe that they’re just unfeeling machines. If they were, BB-T6 wouldn’t have spent the entire trip from Chandrila in such high dudgeon.

Rey had been wary about setting foot on another volcanic planet, but as she breaks atmo and approaches the spaceport, she realizes Shu-Torun could not be any more different from Mustafar. Tall, elegant black spires rise from the volcanic rock on the surface, stretching as far as the eye can see, the castles and mansions of ore-barons and other wealthy denizens, and the busy traffic lanes weaving around them indicate that this planet boasts a bustling population.

Ben is standing on the landing pad, arms crossed over his chest, a lone figure in black easily blending in with the architecture around him. As Rey descends the ship’s ramp, Teesix rolling along reluctantly behind her, she sees that though Ben’s style hasn’t changed much, he’s wearing fewer layers than she’s ever seen on him before, just black pants tucked into shiny, military-grade black boots, and a fitted black shirt with long sleeves and a strange shimmer to the fabric. She wonders if this is Shu-Torun fashion, and tries hard not to let her eyes linger on his neck and the dip in his collarbone the shirt exposes.

Rey comes to a stop an arm’s-length away from him. “Hello, Ben,” she says, her eyes greedily taking in every feature of his face, and he does the same, not bothering to hide it. It’s been one standard year since they’ve seen each other, and though they can share thoughts and feelings from across the galaxy, this is different. “Happy birthday,” she says with a small smile, all too aware of his feelings on this particular topic.

“It’s not my birthday on Shu-Torun,” Ben sniffs, and though his tone is irritatingly disdainful, the sound of his voice—his real voice—makes her smile widen.

Rey crosses her arms over her chest, mirroring his posture. “Too bad. It’s your birthday according to the Galactic Standard Calendar, and I’m here to celebrate.” Her solemn tone is at odds with her words—but that’s fitting for them, somehow. The idea of the morose, sad-eyed man before her celebrating anything is laughable.

Ben scowls down at her feet. “What’s that?”

Rey glances down to find poor Teesix doing its best to hide its round body behind her legs. “It’s a BB unit,” Rey says, a hint of mischief in her voice. “With a selenium drive and a thermal hyperscan vindicator—”

“I’m familiar with droid specifications,” Ben cuts her off sternly, but the corner of his mouth twitches. Rey knows there’s a sardonic sense of humor in there somewhere, learned or perhaps inherited from his father, but it takes some work to tease it out.

“This is BB-T6,” Rey says, taking pity on the little droid and allowing it to remain in its makeshift hiding spot. “A birthday present from your mother.”

Ben visibly flinches at that, breathing in deeply through his nose, ungloved hands curling into fists to steady himself. Rey stares at his hands for a moment like she’s never seen his skin before—which she hasn’t, really.

“Please relay my gratitude to her,” he says stiffly, “but I have no use for a droid.”

Rey scoffs at that, shoving her travel bag into his arms and brushing past him. “Stuff it, flyboy. You might be a great pilot, but your repair skills are kriffing terrible. Your mother thought it was best to get you an astromech before your ship flies to pieces in hyperspace, and you along with it.”

“My ship is in perfect condition!” he protests, trailing after her, but Rey can feel a spark of sentiment, long buried, underneath his indignation—he feels _loved_ , and doesn’t know what to do with it.

Ben yanks that thread of emotion away from her with a snap. “Stop snooping,” he commands, and Rey hides a smile behind her hand.

They take a public transport shuttle from the spaceport to the royal palace, and it’s so full they have to squeeze into a back corner, standing. Teesix nestles itself between their feet, and Ben braces one hand on the wall and one hand on her waist to keep her steady. Rey can feel the warmth of his skin right through her vest and shirt, and she gulps, attempting to banish the thoughts this inspires and replace them with practical considerations.

Ben’s already briefed her on his current situation. He’s living on Shu-Torun as part of an extended, months-long mercenary gig. Just another soldier in an army hired by Queen Trios to safeguard her resource-rich planet from the remnants of the First Order in the post-war chaos the galaxy remains steeped in. The inhabitants’ courtly rituals and obsession with ancient tradition bore him, but their formal politeness prevents anyone from trying to get too close to him, which is just how he wants it. He goes by Ben Antilles here, and has invented a cover story for Rey as well, despite her protestations. Otara Navla, a botanist friend of his from Chandrila—lest the Shu-Torunites, who are highly suspicious by nature, check her ship’s flight logs.

When the shuttle docks, he guides her into the palace, and Rey tries not to gape at the opulence around her. She’s spent a fair amount of time on Coruscant and various other highly civilized Core worlds by now, but nothing she’s seen compares to this.

“Feel free to stare at anything or anyone.” Ben sounds amused. “It’s considered polite here, an expression of admiration.”

Rey bites back a remark about how he’s become quite the Shu-Torunite, judging by how much he’s been staring at _her_ during their trip from the spaceport.

Ben takes her to a room in one of the palace’s many towers. It’s small, but richly decorated, and a balcony juts out from the curved wall opposite the door, overlooking a slow-moving lava river below. Rey hovers inside the doorway, eyeing the enormous bed which takes up nearly half the room, the black sheets and gauzy gold canopy. Ben sets her bag at the foot of the bed, turning to look at her. Everything about him—from his princely dark hair to his fitted black clothes to his effortlessly regal bearing—fits here. Rey fidgets, glancing down at her own serviceable grey clothes and worn brown boots, feeling as out of place as a tauntaun on Tatooine.

“Where’s your room?” she asks, conversationally.

Ben shifts on his feet, and his face goes red. Rey narrows her eyes, instantly suspicious.

“This is my room,” he confesses.

Rey’s eyebrows shoot up, and Ben’s blush deepens, seeming to spread even to the tip of one overlarge ear peeking out from the tangle of his hair. “Queen Trios is, uh,” he mumbles, and she’s never seen him so ineloquent, “under the impression that we are, erm.” He makes a vague gesture between the two of them.

“Are what?”

“Lovers,” he mutters, refusing to meet her eyes.

“What?” The word escapes her mouth as a squeak.

Teesix makes a tittering noise from the corner it’s rolled off to explore, and Rey points a threatening finger at it. “Oi, switch off!” She returns her gaze to Ben, who still has his eyes stubbornly fixed on the mosaic-tiled floor. “How did she arrive at that conclusion?” Rey asks, managing to keep her voice steady, determined to ignore the warm, shivery feeling this information has sent dancing along every nerve ending in her body.

Ben finally raises his eyes to hers, and they somehow look even more intense than usual. “I requested her permission to have a visitor, and she made assumptions which I flatly denied, to no apparent effect. She insists the guest rooms are full with housing her hired army, and I have no power to argue with the sovereign of this planet, who’s been nothing but generous to me.” Ben clears his throat. “I’ll sleep on the floor, of course.”

“Of course,” Rey echoes, allowing the tension to seep out of her body.

It returns immediately, in full force, when she steps into the ’fresher and sees what’s hanging on a hook high on the wall, next to the door. “Ben!” she calls, her voice pitching higher with agitation. “What is _this_?”

He takes his time answering, leaving Rey standing there in stunned contemplation of the sumptuous ball gown in front of her—for there’s no other proper name to give such a dress. It’s a rich, fiery red, with a fitted bodice and an enormous skirt flaring out from the waist. It’s high-necked and long-sleeved, with deep cutouts to expose the shoulders and upper arms of the wearer. Rey takes a step towards it, reaching out a hesitant hand to touch the fabric, as though it might fall apart at the brush of her fingers.

She turns her head when she feels Ben leaning in the doorway, one of his arms braced above his head as he watches her with an unguarded expression on his face. “It’s for you.” His voice is low, and the way he’s looking at her, combined with the way his kriffing _huge_ body blocks the entire doorway, trapping her in the ’fresher, sends a pleasant shiver down her spine. “Our presence is required at a formal ball this evening.”

Rey’s mouth drops open. “Tell me you’re _joking_.” The only formal events she’s ever attended are military events, which don’t exactly include dancing as a requirement, and she’s never worn a dress in her twenty-three years of existence.

He gives a wry, lopsided smile that looks so much like one of Han’s she has to turn away. “I’m sorry to report I’m deadly serious.”

“I’m not going.” Rey aims her declaration in the general direction of the offending dress.

Ben gives a long-suffering sigh. “They hold these formal events nearly every night. Pageantry is the bedrock of Shu-Torun culture. It will be viewed as an insult to the queen and her people if you refuse to attend.”

Rey turns to glower at him. “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

Ben says nothing, but he doesn’t need to. He was afraid she would have cancelled her visit—Rey doesn’t need their Force connection to know this; she can read it on his face.

Despite herself, she softens at this revelation, enough to make another joke at his expense. “So this _isn’t_ a celebratory birthday ball in your honor?”

Now it’s Ben’s turn to scowl. “I swear to R’iia, and all the fragging sand on Jakku, if you tell anyone….” He doesn’t finish the threat, and the soft look that remains in his eyes belies it anyway.

Rey chews on her lip, turning to study the dress again.

“Do you like it?” Ben asks quietly.

“It’s beautiful,” Rey breathes. If she’s obliged to wear it she might as well be truthful.

“Queen Trios picked it out.” There’s a strange catch in his voice and Rey nods, pretending like she doesn’t know he’s lying. Though the dress is fit for royalty, not a scruffy scavenger from the Western Reaches, the sleeves are too reminiscent of her ever-present arm wraps, the bright color too similar to flashes of Ben’s daydreams—the ones they both pretend she hasn’t seen—where he imagines her not in her usual beiges and greys but in deep greens that bring out her eyes, midnight blues that accentuate her freckles, dark reds that match well-kissed lips—Rey pulls back breathlessly when she realizes she’s been drawn into his current thoughts, cheeks flaming as they both ignore what just passed between them, that familiar, precarious dance they’ve been performing for years now.

* * *

Rey takes a long shower, programming the water as hot as she can stand it, hoping the steam will relax some of her nerves, equally unsettled by this unfamiliar situation and by her physical proximity to Ben after so long away from him.

Rey puts the dress on afterwards—or, more accurately, _climbs_ into it. The skirt is so ridiculously wide she has trouble maneuvering around the small room, the fabric so heavy it makes her stand straighter, shoulders back, and in the mirror she’s surprised to find a reflection that suggests she might not be so ill-suited to it after all. It’s a perfect fit, every part of the bodice and sleeves molded to her skin, and she tries hard not to think about why that is.

Ben has made himself scarce by the time she slides the door open, peeking hesitantly into the bedroom because she can’t reach the fastenings on the upper part of her back. She doesn’t know if she’s relieved or disappointed that he’s not there to help, that she won’t feel his knuckles brush her skin as he fumbles with the tiny buttons. Instead, she uses a datapad by the door to summon one of the palace’s servant droids to help with her dress and her hair.

* * *

Ben returns with a quiet knock on the door that sends Teesix rolling towards it, beeping shrilly. Rey shushes the little droid and calls for Ben to come in.

“You two are going to have to learn to get along,” she’s scolding Teesix when the sound of the door sliding open makes her look up, and the rest of her reprimand dies on her lips.

Ben has stopped short in the doorway and is openly staring at her, but she can hardly register that because she’s too busy staring right back.

There’s always been something of a prince about him, though Rey has been told often enough that he’s not technically a prince, not when the planet that would have given him that title was destroyed before he was born. Despite that, it lingers in his spirit, in his blood, in his bearing. And he’s never looked more worthy of it than in this moment, and she suddenly feels very small and very insignificant.

He’s always tall, always stands straight and broad-shouldered, but his habit of dressing entirely in black doesn’t do justice to the true breadth of him. And he’s still wearing black now, but it’s softened with a hint of other colors, and Rey’s struck breathless at the sheer _size_ of him, ironic as the realization is now, when he’s no longer a physical threat to her, when she’s not locked in combat with him.

He’s wearing a velvety-soft black evening jacket that falls to the back of his knees, an ivory wrap tunic underneath that cuts into a v-shape in the middle of his chest and peeks out from under his jacket sleeves, and a deep blue-black shirt beneath that, covering the rest of his chest up to his neck. A wide, textured black belt cuts across his stomach—and that, at least, is familiar—and his black pants are tucked into matching boots of the same texture.

Rey’s hand spasms next to her. She wants to reach out and _touch_ —an impulse she reins in, clenching her hand at her side in a gesture spurred by muscle memory, though it’s not her own.

Finally, she dares to lift her eyes to his, heart thudding in her chest at the intensity of his gaze. His eyes look black, his generous mouth parted like he’s forgotten how to breathe.

Rey looks down again, brushing her hands self-consciously over the intricate beading that covers the bodice and spreads outwards over the top half of the skirt. “I’ve never worn a dress before,” she confesses quietly.

“It’s beautiful,” he breathes, and his voice is so solemn, like he’s making a vow. “You’re beautiful.”

Rey’s heart all but stops entirely at that, and still she cannot find the courage to look at him. The electricity in the room, in the air between them, in the Force flowing through them, is almost more than she can bear. So she forces a laugh, a desperate grab for levity. “Every time I take a step I’m half afraid I’ll trip and fall.”

She dares a glance upwards, and Ben has relaxed a little, enough that they can both breathe again. One corner of his mouth tips up into what could _nearly_ be called a smirk. “You’ve fought worse monsters than Shu-Torun formalwear. I’m certain you’ll prove the victor in the end.”

Rey bites her lip against a smile. “Did you just make a _joke_?”

Ben raises an eyebrow. “Don’t tell anyone.”

* * *

The ball is held in the Abyssal Rooms beneath the planet’s surface, and they defy Rey’s expectations, just as so many other things about this planet do. Wide, intricately carved white marble columns run up to similarly carved arches that span so high above the dance floor an AT-AT could walk beneath them with room to spare. Rey can glimpse more rooms through the arches, branching off from each other like petals from a flower. A brilliant yellow-red light from some unknown source suffuses the entire space, giving the overall effect of an aboveground palace bathed in sunlight despite its underground location.

Queen Trios appears to be about the same age as Leia Organa, lovely and stately in an ocean-blue dress, her grey-streaked brown hair swept up beneath a gold crown. Ben introduces Rey using her false name, sweeping into a graceful bow, and Rey awkwardly attempts a curtsy.

“Ah yes,” the queen says, smiling at Rey. “Otara Navla, the botanist from Chandrila. I hope you are enjoying your visit to Shu-Torun?”

“Yes, your majesty.” Rey clasps her hands in front of her, choosing her words carefully lest she slip up somehow. “Your palace is very beautiful.”

Queen Trios inclines her head, accepting the compliment, and turns her eyes on Ben. “I hope Ben is enjoying your visit as well,” she remarks, eyes sparkling with knowing amusement. He fidgets under her gaze, like a little boy caught doing something naughty, and she looks almost _fond_ of him, which makes Rey’s jaw drop a little. She’s never encountered anyone favorably disposed towards him except his family and, well—herself. It reminds her, all at once, that he’s been living his new life for an entire year, a life that she’s only been a part of distantly, experiencing only what he allowed her to see and feel.

The queen extends a hand towards the dance floor. “They are about to begin the waltz. We would be honored if you would join it, Otara.”

Rey opens her mouth to attempt a respectful protestation that she can’t dance, but Ben silences her with a thought, directing another bow towards the queen and taking Rey’s hand, leading her down the white marble steps and onto the first dance floor.

“If one is here, one must dance,” Ben murmurs, and Rey has difficulty concentrating on his words instead of the warmth of his palm against her fingers. “That’s the first rule of Shu-Torun society.”

“It’s a bit...stifling, isn’t it?” Rey is almost overwhelmed taking in the crowd of people around her, all dressed as elegantly as the pair of them, all infinitely more poised and graceful than Rey is, clinging to Ben with one hand and her wide skirt with the other, stepping carefully lest she fall and embarrass herself.

Ben leads her to a bowl of small, glowing yellow spheres, then holds her hand flat out in front of him, plucking spheres out of the bowl one at a time to place on the ends of each of her fingers. “What are you doing?” Rey asks, bemused, staring down at the strange ritual he’s performing.

“The ladies wear these for the traditional dance,” he says, starting on her other hand, and Rey is distracted for a moment by the way a lock of his dark hair brushes his forehead as he bends over her hand.

“Why?”

Ben shrugs one broad shoulder. “They create trails of light when you spin. It’s pretty.” He releases her hand when he’s finished, and Rey wiggles her fingers, relieved the little orbs don’t pop off and go rolling across the floor. She’s spent the last few years broadening her experiences beyond the desert horizon of Jakku, but there’s something about this place—and even Ben—that makes her feel hopelessly uncultured.

“You only need to wear them,” Ben explains as they find a place on the dance floor, “for the stately Shu-Torun counter-bore waltz. Then you can take them off.”

“ _Bore_?” Rey gives a soft snort. “That’s fitting.”

That startles a low laugh out of Ben, a sound she’s never heard before, and when her eyes fly to his face he looks just as taken aback as she feels. Rey smiles, oddly delighted with herself. She wants to hear it again.

But he’s already grown serious. “The movements are very simple. All you need to do is hold your arms out and spin with the music. My part is a bit more complicated. Sometimes we’ll be face to face, and sometimes I’ll have my back to you.”

Rey frowns. “You’re quite the expert at this dance.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I’ve been living here for nearly half a year.” He spreads his arms out at a perpendicular angle from his sides, somehow managing to look more graceful than ridiculous.

Rey’s frown deepens as it suddenly occurs to her that if he’s danced this counter-bore waltz so much, he has to have danced it with _partners_ —and a heated, unpleasant, irrational feeling begins to take shape in her chest.

Ben’s mouth tightens, a tiny furrow appearing between his eyebrows as he looks down at her. He’s caught the thread of jealousy she’s struggling mightily to subdue, and, mortified, she cuts it off before he can identify it.

The music starts then, and Rey flings her arms out, suddenly grateful to this absurd dance for interrupting what might otherwise have been a very unpleasant revelation for her. The movements don’t require them to touch at all, for which she is also grateful. Physical touch magnifies the connection they have in the Force, making it more difficult to hide things they don’t want the other to feel. However, the dance does require they twirl chest-to-chest, so close they brush up against each other inadvertently at times. It’s a relief when he executes a graceful half-turn for the portion of the dance where he’s facing away. She’s free from the intensity of his eyes, but pressed up against the broad expanse of his back as they resume twirling, which is certainly doing nothing to calm her down.

She turns her head to stare at the golden streaks of light the glowing orbs on her fingers make, trying to fill her senses with anything but _him_.

When he spins back to face her, their arms outstretched at an angle this time, chest to chest, dizzy from twirling, Rey suddenly recalls a very different dance—a snow-quiet forest, red and blue lights spinning in the dark, labored breathing, hands tight on each other’s wrists as they fought for control, the hiss of his lightsaber meeting the snow, her triumphant relief when he stayed down, at last. The dark, vicious satisfaction that she’d wounded him.

She looks up at that wound, a scar cutting across his right eye and cheek and down his neck, and she cannot find it in her to be sorry for it, even now.  

* * *

Later, Rey stands off to one side, next to one of the marble columns, while Ben departs on a mission to find them food and drinks.

Someone comes to stand beside her, and Rey turns her head to see it’s Queen Trios. With a start of surprise, she begins to sink into another poor attempt at a curtsy, but the queen stops her with a hand on her arm. “I think we’ve both had quite enough of that,” she says, not unkindly.

Rey straightens with relief. “I’m not accustomed to….” She makes a gesture encompassing the whole room. “...all of this.”

Queen Trios gives an understanding nod. “Nevertheless, you danced beautifully.”

“Thank you, but I find that doubtful,” Rey says with good humor.

“You danced as one. Perfectly matched. I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing him dance with his equal.”

Rey’s cheeks heat, and she doesn’t know what to say to that. She can feel the queen’s eyes intent on her face.

“Your true name is not Otara Navla, I think.”

Rey’s head snaps up, her eyes widening. “I don’t—”

Queen Trios gives a wry smile. “No more than his true name is Ben Antilles.”

Rey’s mouth opens and closes. She’s not a skilled liar, and the queen seems too strong-minded a person to be susceptible to mind tricks.

The queen holds up a placating hand. “Don’t worry, child. I’m not going to ask who you really are. But did you think I wouldn’t recognize a Force user on my own planet?”

“What makes you say that?” Rey asks warily. She’s taken pains to keep a tight leash on her powers today, and she imagines Ben’s been doing the same for the duration of his stay. Still, when the Force flows through a person as strongly as it does through the two of them, it’s impossible to cut oneself off from it entirely. And Rey has encountered her fair share of people who have the ability to sense how the Force moves around them, even if they cannot use it themselves.

“Has Ben never told you the history of this planet?” When Rey shakes her head, Queen Trios continues with a regretful sigh. “When war tears apart the galaxy, trouble always comes to our door. Our resources are both a blessing and a curse. In the age of the Empire, when I was younger than you, it brought Lord Vader to our door.”

Rey doesn’t move, doesn’t even blink. Whatever else the queen thinks she knows, she can’t know _that_.

“He killed my father and siblings, and he made me queen. He cut off my hand when I tried to shoot him, and he told me I showed _an admirable willingness to sacrifice for the greater good_. He gave me a rock, a fragment of Alderaan, to remind me what happened to worlds that resisted the Empire. I knew all about what happened to Leia Organa and her planet, and I wasn’t going to let that happen to mine. I fell in line to save my people, and in turn the Empire protected my rule. You think I fall on the wrong side of history?” Queen Trios raises a curious eyebrow, inviting criticism.

“I can’t fathom the weight of responsibility a queen bears on her shoulders,” Rey says sincerely.

“I was determined not to repeat history, this time around. The First Order has never set foot on this planet, and never will as long as I draw breath.”

“The First Order is dead,” Rey says, fire in her voice, and the queen doesn’t question why a Force-sensitive botanist would know this.

“I’m afraid these things don’t die so easily,” the queen says wearily. “But I hope you’re right.” Her eyes fall on Ben, who has been waylaid on the other side of the room by a group of richly dressed ore-dukes, a glass of wine in each hand as he listens to them speak.

“He looks very much like his mother, doesn’t he?” Queen Trios remarks, and though her tone is soft, fond even, Rey freezes.

Queen Trios turns to her, reaching to give her a reassuring pat on the arm with what Rey now realizes is a cybernetic hand. “You have nothing to fear from me, my dear. Why do you think I’m telling you this?”

“Honestly...I have no idea.”

“I confess, though it didn’t take me long to figure out who he is, I don’t know why he’s here. Or where he’s been all these years. Perhaps he’s trying to make amends for his grandfather’s actions. Perhaps I want to let him. I still have that piece of Alderaan. I keep it close to me always, no longer as a reminder of the Empire’s power, but of the cost of defeating such an enemy, the sacrifices we must honor and remember.” The queen’s gaze grows distant, lost in her own thoughts. “Sometimes I wonder if that bit of rock called him here. The last prince of Alderaan.”

They stand in silence for a moment, regarding him from across the room. He’s not personable by any means, but there’s something about him—some innate, magnetic quality—that draws people’s eyes to him, and Rey realizes in that moment that her hope for him to disappear into the reaches of the galaxy, unknown and unremarked, has always been in vain. He’s the son of a princess and a scoundrel, a revelation in the Force, and he’s never going to be no one.

Even if being no one would keep him safe.

“He’s looking for peace,” Rey says softly. “He’s had such a weight on his shoulders since the day he was born.”

Queen Trios nods thoughtfully. “And you? What are you looking for?”

“Belonging.” The word tumbles out of Rey’s mouth unbidden, and she flushes, unsure why she’s just confessed such a thing to a stranger.

Queen Trios gives her a long, searching look. “Perhaps you’ve both found what you’re looking for.”

“We’re not...it’s not like that.”

The queen raises an eyebrow, a small, indulgent smile on her face, but she lets Rey’s protestation pass without comment. She turns to look at Ben again, who has extricated himself from the relentless ore-dukes and is skirting the edge of the dance floor on his way to join them. “Please don’t tell him that I know,” the queen says. “I don’t want him to feel that he must leave.”

Rey is grateful for that. “Your secret’s safe with me,” she says, and stores the knowledge away where Ben can’t find it.

* * *

After dinner and two glasses of wine, Rey finds herself full and warm, her mind pleasantly fuzzy, enough that her nerves have disappeared and she can allow herself to enjoy a few regular waltzes with Ben, though she doesn’t know the movements. These require his hand on her waist, one of hers on his shoulder, the other resting in his upturned palm, and she follows his lead, comfortably sinking into his muscle memory to execute the steps.

The alcohol has lowered whatever pretenses they regularly keep up in their Force connection, each letting the other feel how much they’re enjoying touching and being touched, however innocent, however public, it is. Rey has lost whatever jealousy she felt before as the evening wears on—his fixation on her and her alone crackling in the air, soothing in its intensity.

They don’t speak much—they don’t need to. Since the day they met, words have always felt a bit superfluous to them, or somehow, _not enough_.

* * *

Once they’re back in Ben’s room, Rey finds her nerves return in full force. Teesix is already powered down for the night, nestled into a corner, so it’s just Rey and Ben alone in an enclosed space for the first time in years. The room seems so small, shrinking in proportion to the enormous bed and the breadth of Ben’s shoulders.

Rey stands in the middle of the floor, her wide skirt brushing the foot of the bed, and watches Ben as he presses buttons on the panel next to the door to slide it shut and lock it, then as he turns and walks slowly towards her, stopping an arm’s length away. His eyes look black in the dim light of the room.

“I like your hair like that.” His voice is hoarse, and he reaches up to run one of the loose curls framing her face between two of his fingers.

Rey reaches a self-conscious hand up to pat at the back of her head, where the rest of her hair is gathered up loosely. “One of the droids did it. I didn’t even know my hair could curl like this. It’s an awful lot of work.” Rey clamps her mouth shut to stop her nervous babbling.

Ben’s eyes go all soft, and he lets go of the curl. “I like your hair every which way,” he says gravely, and she catches flashes of herself—the three buns she’d spent fifteen years of her life wearing—her hair half-down, the top pulled back into a single bun—her hair loose, wild, rain-wet, the night they fought on Ahch-To. He likes that one best of all, he—gently draws the images away from her before she can see any deeper.

Rey gulps. “I like your hair too,” she whispers, and Ben raises an eyebrow, a spark of mischief in his eyes, like he _knows_. And he probably does, if only from the sheer amount of times she’s indulged in imagining what it would feel like between her fingers. It’s a temptation at this very moment, within her reach, dark and soft and in disorderly waves from dancing and from his own fingers running through it.

Instead, Rey whirls on her heel, presenting him with her back, and turns her head to the left, tucking her chin into her shoulder. “Can you undo the top buttons?” she murmurs. “I can’t reach them.”

Ben’s breath hitches behind her, but he obeys, stepping closer. Rey looks straight ahead again, out the arched balcony doorway and beyond, to the distant lava rivers, which have an otherworldly glow at night. When he frees the top button, at the base of her neck, she squeezes her eyes shut.

He’s careful not to touch her, freeing a second tiny button, and a third, before one of his knuckles inadvertently brushes against her upper spine. Rey’s entire body jolts at the touch, and Ben freezes. “Keep going,” Rey commands breathlessly.

Ben’s breathing is ragged now, and he feels somehow warmer behind her, his presence enveloping her, eclipsing everything else, and she keeps her eyes closed as he resumes unfastening buttons, the knuckles of his right hand traversing the line of her spine as he slowly makes his way downwards. When he frees the last one, at the small of her back, he hesitates. Then he steps even closer, slipping one hand inside her loosened dress, curling it around the span of her waist, his fingers hot against her skin.

Rey sways on her feet, a gasp escaping, and Ben’s hair brushes the exposed skin of her shoulder as he bends his head down and presses his lips against the base of her neck, and Rey is lost. A little sob rises unbidden from her chest, and her knees give out. Ben anticipates it, throwing his left arm around the front of her waist, drawing her back against him, using the strength of his body to hold her upright.

She doesn’t understand how he can feel like both a safe haven and the most dangerous thing she’s ever touched at once.

She lets her head fall back against his shoulder, and his hair is tickling her cheek, and he’s murmuring her name in her ear, so tenderly it breaks her heart, and she’s afraid she’d give him _everything_ if he’d only ask for it—

“Rey,” he says again, and his voice is strained suddenly, his body tense. “Rey, I’m going to let you go.”

His right hand slides out from inside her dress first, but he gives her a moment to find her footing before he drops his other arm from around her waist. Rey turns to hide her exposed back, cheeks burning, crossing her arms over her chest to keep her dress up, refusing to look at him as a confusing swell of rejection flares up in her chest.

“Rey,” Ben says again, almost pleadingly, and he sounds pained, a storm of emotions swirling through their Force connection, so swift and so dizzying she can’t seize upon a single one to identify it. “I need a moment.”

Rey nods, and flees to the safety of the ’fresher.

* * *

When she emerges finally, it’s with reluctance, as she can still feel him waging a war with himself on the other side of the door. She steps into the bedroom, but just barely, hovering near the door in case she needs to make another retreat.

He’s removed his evening jacket but nothing else, and is sitting bent over on the side of the bed, elbows propped on his spread knees, his head in his hands. There’s a pillow and blanket thrown haphazardly on the floor, close to his feet.

She’s struck for a moment—despite the circumstances—by the surreal sight of him in white, stark against his dark hair and the black sheets on the bed, and she wonders if this is what he used to look like, _before_.

“Ben?” she says in a small voice, ashamed of her own cowardice. He flinches, dropping his hands and raising his head, and his eyes run up and down her body. Her sleeping clothes are similar to her regular clothes, dark grey and loosely fitted to her body, but her arms are bare and she’s taken her hair down, letting it spill around her face in those curls that still feel so strange to her.

When Ben’s gaze lands on her hair, his face contorts for a moment, then he closes his eyes, breathing in deeply through his nose, and shoots to his feet, rushing for the ’fresher, making a wide berth around Rey as he goes. “I need a shower,” he mutters darkly, and the door slides shut behind him.

* * *

He takes so long to emerge that Rey ends up falling asleep on the bed—which was no doubt his design. She wakes with a start to a room pitched in darkness, though the soft glow of lava outside the window illuminates the room enough to see dimly.

Rey stares up at the gauzy canopy above her head, trying to figure out what woke her. The mattress is soft as a cloud, the most luxurious she’s ever slept on, but all the same there’s a slight discomfort in her back, distant, not quite her own.

Rey sits up, drawing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them, and peeks over the side of the bed at the floor. Ben is lying on his back, directly on the floor, a pillow under his head and a blanket tucked over him his only concessions to comfort. His eyes are closed, but she knows he’s not sleeping.

“Ben,” Rey says, exasperated. “You can’t sleep like that.”

His scowl is pronounced enough that she can see it even in this dim light. “Watch me.”

“I’d rather not. I’d rather be sleeping.”

“Nothing is preventing you from it,” he sniffs.

Rey makes a frustrated noise. “ _You_ are, you great moof-milker!”

Ben opens his eyes, and has the gall to look insulted by this accusation. “I don’t see how it’s any fault of _mine_ if you can’t sleep,” he retorts, and starts to turn away from her onto his side.

Rey anticipates the twinge in her right shoulder before she feels it. “Stars! You’re impossible!” she growls, slipping one of her legs off the bed so she can poke him in the back with her toes.

He whirls back around immediately, seizing her bare foot in his hand to keep it still, and they both freeze.

“I can _feel_ how uncomfortable you are,” she says, careful to keep a note of vexation in her tone so she can ignore the way his thumb is absently caressing the arch of her foot.

Ben releases her foot like it’s burned him. “I’ve slept on worse,” he mumbles.

“ _Neither_ of us are going to sleep if you don’t stop being so stubborn. This bed is huge. It’ll feel like we’re not even sharing.” Rey somehow doubts that even as she says it, but injects enough confidence into the words to sound convincing.

Ben doesn’t move for one extended, agonizing moment, and then, with a long-suffering sigh that sounds more like he’s doing _her_ a favor than the other way round, heaves himself up off the floor.

Rey draws her leg back under the covers, still sitting up, and watches him, a shadow in the dark as he circles the bed. His sleeping clothes are all black, a disappointingly small amount of his pale skin on display, just the bit of chest the loose neck of his shirt exposes.

“Is that what you usually wear to bed?” Rey asks, trying to sound casual.

“No,” Ben says shortly, refusing to elaborate as he slides under the covers on the other side of the bed, leaving Rey with an embarrassing parade of images in her head of what he _does_ usually wear to bed, if anything at _all_ —and she throws a wall up in her mind around that thought, before he can see it.

The previous discomfort in her body is gone now, replaced with a very different sort of discomfort. Maybe this was a bad idea.

Rey slides back down to a reclining position, pulling the covers up to her chin and replaying the events of the evening in her head to prevent her wayward imagination from painting Ben shirtless in exquisite detail. She thinks of Queen Trios, and of Darth Vader, and the piece of Alderaan, and suddenly most of the heat leaves her body.

“Ben?” she asks anxiously, into the dark.

He must sense her sudden change in mood, because his energy softens as he settles on his back, moving his left arm up over his head on the pillow. “Yes?”

“How do you fight here? I mean...you’re careful, right?”

“Of course I’m careful.” He sounds less grumpy than he probably intended to, and she can feel that he’s gratified by the worry in her voice. “We’ve never had a real battle here anyway. Just training and sparring. Catching the occasional criminal that slips past the city police.”

“But what do you use?”

“I use a blaster and my fists like any regular person.”

“But you’re not a regular person,” Rey says reproachfully. “I know how easy it would be to slip up, and if someone saw you—”

Ben sighs, scrubbing an agitated hand through his hair. “What do you want me to say, Rey? That it kills me to not use the Force? It does. Every day, every minute. It feels like I’m ten years old again, on Chandrila, on Hosnian Prime, visiting my mother’s office in the senate, going to school, even at home, trying to pretend I’m _normal_ , terrified of slipping up. That’s how it feels, and that’s how it’s always going to feel. This is my life now,” he says bleakly.

Rey chews on her lip, sorry she’s dredged up those old memories, intimately aware of how painful they are, how painful words like _regular_ and _normal_ are. Words he’d heard his father sighing regretfully to his mother on occasion, when Han thought Ben couldn’t hear him. “It might not always have to be like that,” she offers, a glimmer of hope in the dark.

He laughs bitterly. “Should I become a hermit on some desert planet? Like my namesake, perhaps.” Then, softer, “Maybe that’s always been my destiny.”

“No,” Rey says, quiet but firm. “No. That’s not what I meant.”

A yearning, aching feeling that is not her own crashes into her, so strong she has to close her eyes against the onslaught, and maybe she shouldn’t have given him this hope when he’s clearly not ready for it yet. She turns on her side, stretching her arm out into the space between them on the bed, which feels like a chasm, reaching for something, reaching for _him_.

There’s nothing but empty air and satiny bedsheets, and then finally, _finally_ , he relents and wraps his hand around hers, his thumb first brushing her knuckles then working its way under her fingers to caress her palm, a soothing movement that relaxes them both.

Ben falls asleep first, and Rey eases her way across the bed until she’s close enough to make out the details of his face. He has his arm thrown overhead again, his other arm tossed across his stomach, and his face is turned towards her, his features slack in sleep. He looks younger, softer, the sometimes harsh angles of his face smoothed out, the scar cutting across his cheek a faint line in the dark, his lips full and relaxed. Rey is struck with a sudden urge to _touch_ , but then her eyes fall on his hair, in beautiful disarray on his pillow, and her hand goes there instead.

It’s softer even than she’d imagined— _unfairly_ soft, really—and stroking it with the tips of her fingers isn’t quite enough, so she dives in a little more, carefully entwining all of her fingers into it.

She doesn’t know why she waited so long to do this.

She pets at it gently for a bit longer, then reaches up to brush back a stray lock that’s fallen onto his forehead. He makes a snuffling sound in his sleep, and she freezes, afraid she’s woken him up, but then he just shifts, nestling deeper into the pillow, nudging his head into her hand with an instinctive motion that sparks tears in her eyes.

Her heart is so full, it terrifies her.

“Happy birthday, Ben,” she whispers to his sleeping form, because this time he can’t say something to ruin it, then she settles down by his side and falls easily into sleep.

* * *

Rey wakes to the soft sound of Teesix beeping, though her mind is too groggy to attempt translating binary at the moment.

“You and me both,” Ben says in a low voice. “There’s no arguing with them. I’m afraid we’re stuck with each other.”

Teesix responds with something Rey is still too sleepy to translate with any accuracy, but it sounds rude. Ben just gives a quiet chuckle in response, a sound that warms Rey, but she frowns when she realizes it’s _too far away_.

She opens her eyes to find herself curled up in the middle of the bed. There’s a dent in Ben’s pillow where he should be, and hazy sunlight streaming into the room at a low angle that indicates the early hour.

Rey scrubs at her eyes, propping herself up on one elbow and blinking in surprise at the sight of Ben seated in a chair next to the bed, his dark eyes fixed on her.

Rey frowns, tugging a hand through her sleep-tangled hair. “Were you watching me sleep?” There’s a flash of the interrogation chamber, the cold metal of her restraints, the deep, stilted sound of Kylo Ren’s voice in his mask. _You’re my guest_. At least he’s not crouched on the floor this time.

Ben’s mouth twitches. “Good morning to you too.” He sounds a little surly, but his pale skin is useless at hiding the way his cheeks redden at being caught.

Rey doesn’t feel sorry for him at all, a thought niggling at the back of her mind that he wouldn’t have had to watch her if he’d just stayed in bed where he _belonged_ , but she buries that deep before he can overhear it. She leverages herself up to a sitting position, and Ben’s eyes follow the motion, seemingly fascinated by the contrast the bare skin of her arm makes against the black sheets.

Rey eyes him right back. He’s wearing a more formal version of the clothing he greeted her in at the spaceport the day before. There’s a gold crest on his sleeve and a blaster tucked into a holster at his hip, and she realizes it’s a uniform.

“I’m on duty this morning,” he says softly. “I’m sorry I can’t escort you back to your ship.”

Rey shrugs as if it’s unimportant, trying to stifle the pang of disappointment. She was the one who’d told him she could only spare a day, but somehow now she finds herself reluctant to leave.

They stare at each other for a long moment, awkwardness flooding in to replace the tension and warmth of the night before, and Rey realizes perhaps he was the wise one, putting this physical space between them while she was still sleeping. No matter what they felt, no matter what they still feel this morning—she has to leave him. And it’s better for both their sakes that they’ve left some lines uncrossed.

“Teesix will go with you,” Ben says, then adds with a sigh, “then to my ship to get started on whatever repairs it needs.”

Rey does nothing to hide the smile that dimples her cheeks.

Ben crosses his arms over his chest. “You could try to look a little less delighted about it.”

Rey raises an eyebrow. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Ben’s mouth twists, his eyes roving over her face like he’s trying to memorize her.

“Stop that,” Rey whispers.

“What?” His eyes are a molten brown in the early morning sunlight.

“Looking at me like—you’re never going to see me again.” Rey chews on her lip. She’d ask him to come with her, but she already knows what his answer would be. She already knows he’s not ready.

“A year is a very long time to go without you.” Ben’s voice is pitched so low it sends goosebumps down Rey’s arms, and she _wants_ —and so does he.  

“I’m right here,” Rey whispers, pouring that very conviction into their Force connection. “I’m always right here.”

Ben blinks, and his eyes are wet, and Rey sits up straighter, holding both her arms out to him—an invitation, a plea—and he crumples, abandoning his chair and taking a knee on the bed, leaning over and enfolding her in his arms. They hold each other as tightly as they can—his hands clutched at her waist and back, hers buried in his hair—and she can feel his heart beating through their clothing, against her chest, almost as though it’s _in_ her chest. His lips brush the top of her head, her temple, the shell of her ear, her jaw, the crook of her neck—and then he’s gone, leaving Rey sitting alone in the middle of the bed with nothing but the echoes of warmth he’d left on the sheets and on her skin.

Rey sits there for so long that Teesix rolls closer and gives a concerned beep.

“I’m fine,” Rey says softly, pressing a hand to her neck, then pulling it away to examine the teardrop Ben had left behind there, sparkling in the sunlight streaming in from the balcony. “Teesix—” she blurts out when the droid starts to roll away. “Take care of him, please.” There must be something just desperate and sad enough in her voice that the little droid relents, making a soft, reassuring noise, and Rey presses her salt-wet finger to her lips.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Rey's dress](http://chandelyer.tumblr.com/post/152823993563/rami-kadi-fall-2016-capsule-collection) and [Ben's outfit](https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/fall-2016-menswear/balmain/slideshow/collection#51) that he wears to the ball.
> 
> I imagine Teesix looking a bit like [the Resistance BB units](http://www.starwars.com/databank/bb-unit), except he's newer and has a full-dome head like BB-8.
> 
> [Shu-Torun](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Shu-Torun) and [Trios](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Trios) are taken from the Darth Vader comics, and the events Trios mentions to Rey take place in the Darth Vader Annual 1, which I highly recommend checking out (it's a lot of fun and includes evil!Threepio and evil!Artoo, a fancy space ball, and an extremely stupid ore-duke trying to get Vader to dance with his daughter. You can imagine how THAT goes over lol).
> 
> I KNEW I had to include bedsharing in this fic somehow because it's my FAVORITE TROPE, but I was so sorry I had to make it not lead to anything (other than sexy, sexy hair touching lmao)...for now. We gotta suffer a little more before we get there ;)
> 
> [Listen to the soundtrack here](https://open.spotify.com/user/greysecondchances/playlist/4HwkCxQkvWINMXPC3hWma0).


	3. Nar Shaddaa

_Nar Shaddaa_

_One standard year later_

 

“What do you mean, you lost him?” Rey demands over the comm from the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon, freshly landed at the teeming spaceport of the Smuggler’s Moon.

Teesix responds over the comm, a bit peevishly, that Ben regularly disappears into the crowds of Nar Shaddaa, sometimes for days at a time, leaving the little droid to watch the ship, and that if Rey had arrived when she said she would instead of a day early, Ben would have been there to meet her.

“That’s exactly the point, Teesix,” Rey says wearily. “I’m supposed to catch him off-guard, see what he’s up to.”

Teesix responds that it’s very capable of keeping an eye on Ben Solo, thank you very much, and all he’s been doing on Nar Shaddaa for the last local month, as far as it can see, is gambling all his credits away.

“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” Rey says, standing up and slipping her worn brown poncho over her head. “He’s gambling all right, but he’s _winning_ , and he’s giving the credits away.”

The little BB unit makes a confused noise, but Rey doesn’t feel like explaining at the moment.

“Never mind. I’ll find him. We’ll be back tonight.”

Rey holsters a blaster in the belt that extends down to her upper thigh, and tucks her saberstaff out of sight beneath the folds of her poncho, clipping it at her waist, then exits the Falcon, engaging the security system as she goes. It may look like a bucket of rust and bolts on the outside, but she’s been told the inhabitants of the Smuggler’s Moon aren’t exactly discriminating when it comes to what they choose to steal.

The moon’s surface is covered by one giant city, much like Coruscant, but it has none of the glamor and sophistication of Coruscant, and none of the atmospheric scrubbers and recycling stations to go with it, either. The air is filthy with pollution, and even the fat drops of rain falling from the sky look dirty. Rey wrinkles her nose at all of it and pauses for a moment, trying to center herself in the Force without breathing in too deeply.

Ben’s been planet-hopping for the last eight standard months since he left Shu-Torun, never staying in one place too long, restless, adrift. Rey had only felt a small bit of contentment from him once he’d temporarily settled on Nar Shaddaa, which was alarming. A city-moon in Hutt Space, populated by nothing but criminals and thugs and bounty hunters, and _this_ is where he’s currently finding his peace?

It had only made sense to her once the credits started rolling into Leia’s bank account, by the millions.

The Senator—for that’s what she is again, now that the war is over and the shattered remnants of the New Republic are trying to form a stable government once more—had shoved a datapad into Rey’s hands, and she’d slowly absorbed the huge numbers, not understanding what she was looking at until she noticed Leia’s name at the top, right under an account number and the words _United Bank of Galactic City_.

“I hope you have an explanation for this,” Leia had demanded.

Rey had blinked down at her in confusion. “I’m not sure—”

Leia had poked a finger at the ludicrously large numbers on the screen. “What is my son up to?”

Rey had blinked a few more times, understanding finally dawning. “So _that’s_ what he’s doing on Nar Shaddaa,” she’d murmured, almost to herself.

Leia had pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. “Please tell me my son isn’t stealing money from the criminal underworld and slicing into my personal bank account to deposit it there.”

Rey had closed her eyes for a moment, the thousands of lightyears and star systems between them fading away to nothing as she sank into the pool of Ben’s feelings. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” Rey said dryly, opening her eyes. “It’s for the Republic. He didn’t know where else to send it.”

Leia had sighed deeply, staring down at the datapad screen for a long time, a rare storm of indecision swirling within her. “I suppose at a time like this I can’t afford to look a gift fathier in the mouth. All the same,” she added sternly. “I need to know it’s clean money, untraceable. The last thing the Republic needs is accusations of payoffs by spice cartels.”

So Rey had arrived on Nar Shaddaa the day before Ben’s birthday in an attempt to catch him off-guard, as much as someone with whom she shared an inconvenient Force connection _could_ be caught off-guard.

It’s difficult to pinpoint his exact location in a place with this kind of population density. There are so many lifeforms everywhere, crowding the dirty duracrete streets, all of them in a hurry, all of them paranoid and suspicious. Rey plants a hand on the blaster strapped to her thigh and scowls, projecting a fierceness that she hopes will convince everyone to leave her alone.

She soon gives up trying to quiet her mind, between the loud city noises all around her and the irritating, fat drops of rain pelting her head. She lets instinct take over, sinking into their Force connection and trusting her feet to lead her to him on their own. Ben is distant from her, distracted by something, and she thinks he’s still unaware of her arrival.

* * *

It takes her a couple of local hours to locate him at a seedy high-stakes casino deep in the Corellian Sector. Rey slips in the door, relieved to be out of the rain at last, and stops at the bar to buy two glasses of Corellian ale.

Ben is seated at a sabacc table in a far dark corner, playing against a Trandoshan, a Weequay, a Nikto, and a couple of humans. Rey walks up to him, so close she bumps her hip against his arm, and hands over one of the glasses of ale as casually as if they’d just seen each other an hour ago instead of a year ago.

Ben doesn’t miss a beat, taking the glass, tipping his head back to look up at her for a moment, and there’s no sign of surprise anywhere about him. Rey frowns, annoyed by her failure to sneak up on him, and a spark of amusement flares in him at that.

“Thank you, Otara,” he says with a hint of mischief in his voice, drinking deeply from his glass. “I thought you hated Corellian ale.”

Rey takes a sip of her own drink, keeping her face carefully passive. “When in the Corellian Sector….”

Ben’s gaze lingers on her face for a moment, then he returns his attention to the game, sending a card into the interference field, the column of energy in the middle of the gaming table. He takes the hand amid groans from his tablemates, and pushes his considerable winnings into the pot for the next hand.

One of the humans who’d folded, a young man in the red armor of the Guavian Death Gang, eyes Rey for long enough that she grows uncomfortable and returns his gaze with a death glare. He grins wolfishly, and when he speaks it’s with the same distinctive accent as his fellow gang members Rey had encountered just after she left Jakku, all those years ago.

“Is this your girl, Lars?” The man directs the question to Ben. “And where’ve you been hiding her?”

“I’m not _anyone’s_ —” Rey starts to spit out, but Ben loops an arm around her waist, drawing her even closer to him, and gives a rumbled affirmation. Rey gapes down at him, ready to shove his arm off of her, but he quiets her temper with a thought. The man is trying to distract him from the game by making Rey angry, and she’s playing right into his hands.

She concedes his point with reluctance, melting into his arm and sipping at her glass again to calm herself. The ale isn’t _so_ bad—she could acquire a taste for it, given time.  

They play a few more hands, until everyone but the Weequay and the Trandoshan has folded. Ben frowns down at his cards, feigning worry, but Rey knows he’d been taught to memorize the likelihood of each card coming up and how to play those odds in his own favor from a very young age, the inevitable result of having Han Solo as a father and Lando Calrissian as an uncle.

The Weequay crows in triumph as he throws down his Perfect Sabacc, with a score of negative twenty-three, which is usually a winning hand.

Ben gives a small, crooked smile and tosses out his cards—an Idiot’s Array, the combination of three cards that trumps all other hands—and sits back in his chair, draining the rest of his ale from the glass.

Several discontented murmurs sound around the table, and the Trandoshan points a clawed finger at him. “One of these days, Quell, your luck’s going to run out,” the reptilian humanoid growls out from behind a row of threatening, spiky teeth.

Ben’s smile fades. “Not today,” he says grimly, then leans forward to rake his winnings into a pouch hanging from his belt, lurching up from his chair and taking Rey’s hand in his to hurry them out of the casino.

Once they’re out on the rainy streets again, Rey yanks her hand free. “Is this what you’ve been doing?” she demands.

Ben doesn’t break his purposeful stride, so she scrambles to catch up with him, taking nearly two steps for every one of his. “What does it matter?”

“It _matters_ ,” Rey hisses, “if dirty credits are going into Leia’s account!”

Ben comes to a complete stop then, and turns to look down at her. His hair is messy and rain-wet, even blacker than usual, his eyelashes stuck together in clumps, the line of his jaw tight with frustration, and _oh how she’s missed him_.

He blinks as this revelation softens the air between them. “Look,” he sighs, “can this discussion wait until after I deposit the credits in the bank where no one can jump me and try to steal them?”

Rey tips her chin up. “Fine.”

Ben gives a curt nod. “Fine.” He takes off again, no doubt headed for the bank, and Rey skips to catch up with him.

“Lars Quell? Really?”  

Ben gives her a sidelong, sulky glance. “What’s wrong with it?”

Rey laughs, shaking her head. “You have _terrible_ aliases.”

* * *

Once the credits are safely deposited, they duck into the Meltdown Cafe to escape the rain, sitting across from each other in a dimly lit booth as Ben orders them each a Starshine Surprise. While they wait for their drinks to arrive, he explains his method for making the money untraceable, filtering it through various banks on different planets before he finally deposits it in his mother’s account.

Rey sits back, arms crossed over her chest, a bit mollified. “Still, do you have to make amends by cheating at cards?”

“It’s not cheating,” Ben protests hotly. “It’s playing the odds in my favor. Would you rather a bunch of criminals have that money?”

Rey sighs. If she’s being honest, she really has no moral qualms about what he’s doing, only concern that Leia might have them, or what the ramifications would be if anyone discovers where the money is coming from.

Ben gives a sardonic smile, reacting to her train of thought. “If she wanted to keep her hands clean at all times,” he says in a low voice, “she wouldn’t have married a smuggler.”

* * *

Rey splutters around her first sip of Starshine Surprise, the syrupy, bitter drink sticking in her throat and burning a warm trail down to her stomach. Two sips in, and she already feels a bit lightheaded.

“Are you trying to get me drunk?” she accuses.

Ben raises an eyebrow, taking a dainty sip from his own glass. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize they were this strong.” Rey’s skepticism must roll off her in waves, because he sets his glass down, affronted. “I’ve never had one before!” he protests. “I thought you’d want to try a local favorite, get a taste of the sector.”

Rey wrinkles her nose and trails a finger down the side of the glass. “I’ve been on Nar Shaddaa for less than half a day and I’ve already had more than enough of a taste for it.”

Ben sobers at that, and his eyes turn sad. He clutches his glass tightly in both hands. Rey stares down at them, the sheer size of them dwarfing his glass, the play of veins across the back, and tries _not_ to think of the time one of those hands had been on her bare waist.

“Do you want to leave?” he asks in a hoarse voice, and it’s not until she sees the martyred look on his face that Rey realizes what’s the matter with him.

“I don’t want to leave _you_ ,” she elaborates, pressing her lips together to hold back an exasperated smile. “Just—can we go somewhere else?”

The tension melts out of him all at once, replaced with such relieved warmth, such open, guileless gratitude, that Rey can’t meet his eyes. Such a simple thing she offers to him, a day in her presence once per standard year, and he drinks it up like a man dying of thirst in a desert wasteland. She takes a hurried gulp of her Starshine Surprise to give them both a moment of privacy with their feelings, and she realizes that was a mistake when it goes straight to her head once more.

It gives her the courage to meet his eyes again, the familiar dark intensity of them, and she tilts her head to one side, studying him, his stupid eternally black clothing, the crooked line of his large nose, the messy waves of his hair, a stray, damp lock tumbled across his forehead.

“Yeah, we can go somewhere else,” he says softly. “Wherever you want.”

Rey gives him a fond, dopey smile, and reaches across the table to flick the lock of his hair off his forehead, but on the way back her fingers get distracted tracing the constellations of beauty marks on his unscarred cheek.

Ben’s eyebrows crinkle up, and he’s smiling indulgently, but he intercepts her hand with his, lowering it to the table, and reaches out his other hand to pull her Starshine Surprise away from her. “I think you’ve had enough of that.”

“If you say so,” Rey says lazily, twisting her hand under his to twine their fingers together.

Ben stares at her like she’s sprouted a second head, but he doesn’t move his hand away. “Where do you want to go, Rey? Anywhere in the galaxy, I’ll take you.”

Rey’s traitorous heart flutters at the promise in his voice, the infinite possibility of it unfolding before her for a moment like blue star-streaks in hyperspace. Then she sobers, reality crashing back in upon the pleasant fuzziness of her mind. “I’m expected on Coruscant in five days,” she sighs.

The corner of Ben’s full mouth tips up. “Anywhere in the galaxy we can reach within a day, then.”

Rey considers for a moment, thinking of all the places the traders who came to Jakku would describe, all the planets in the galaxy she’s always longed to set foot on. She’s far more well-traveled now than she was when she’d first met Ben in the green depths of the forest on Takodana, but most of her travels in the intervening years have been for war or business, never for pleasure. The thought of traveling somewhere just to _look_ at it is a foreign concept to her, but one she wants to experience.

“Iego,” she says finally, decisively. “There was an Ithorian trader who came to Jakku when I was nine. She’d lived on Iego for a while, and I overheard her talking about the thousand moons, how at night it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in the galaxy. I offered her a whole portion to tell me more about it. She wouldn’t take it, but she told me anyway.” Rey chews on her lip, her feelings conflicted. It’s one of her better memories from Jakku, but in hindsight her meager offering must have been almost laughable to the trader. But whatever it was that moved her to linger, telling stories of far-off places to a lonely little girl, Rey is still grateful for it.

Ben’s eyes are damp when she looks at him again, the raw ache of her past a shared, open wound between them. She doesn’t need to explain her feelings, or even identify them to herself, because he feels them instinctively, as if they are his own.

She smiles, blinking away her own tears. “Do you want your birthday present now, or when we get back?”

Ben’s mouth twitches, a full-body sigh emanating from his broad chest. “Now, if you must.”

Rey gently disentangles her hand from his, tucking both of her arms into her poncho, studying him for a moment. This one is not going to be easy for him, but Leia had asked her to do this, so do it she would. “Come with me,” she says quietly, and Ben looks hesitant, but he follows her.

* * *

Since they’re already in the Corellian Sector, it doesn’t take Rey long to find the apartment, between Leia’s careful directions and Ben’s knowledge of the area. Rey wonders, guardedly so that Ben can’t hear the thought, if he’s settled here on purpose, or perhaps subconsciously. An effort to be closer to his father in whatever way he can, however it might pain him.

On the 44th floor of a dingy, ramshackle apartment building, Rey pauses before a door and leans against the wall instead, reciting an access code from memory.

Ben’s thumb hovers over the screen midway through keying it in, and he gives her a wary look. “That’s my birth date.”

Rey gives him a sad smile. “I know.”

Ben’s face contorts—he knows what’s on the other side of the door. He finishes entering the code, and it slides open, sticking a bit on the way. It’s old and it hasn’t been opened in nearly five years.

He pauses in the doorway and looks at Rey, and though he’s a grown man, powerful in ways beyond comprehension, a fighter, a killer—there’s something of a lost little boy about him, and he seems smaller and so, so scared, his eyes wide and watery and pleading to be saved.

But Rey can’t save him from this. “She wants you to have it,” she says hoarsely, and, as if compelled by those words, Ben straightens his shoulders and steps into Han Solo’s old apartment.

* * *

Rey stays in the hallway, leaving him alone with his guilt and his grief as long as she can stand it, gently extricating herself from their Force connection to give him as much privacy as possible. But the walls are thin, and she doesn’t need the Force to hear the bone-deep, choking sobs that wrack his body, the shaky breaths between them, the low, wounded-animal sounds escaping uncontrolled from his chest as he finally— _finally_ —allows himself to face what he’s done.

Rey sits on the floor, knees pulled to her chest, head tipped back against the wall, eyes squeezed shut, and attempts to meditate, to let her mind float free, but it’s next to impossible when Ben is in so much pain. She turns her mind to the only version of the Jedi code that brings her comfort, the younglings’ one, the ancient one. _Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force._ She recites it in her mind over and over again, so many times she loses count, until Ben quiets on the other side of the wall and she can stay away from him no longer.

The apartment is dim, a five-year layer of dust sitting on everything that Ben hasn’t disturbed. She finds him in the small bedroom, slumped against the bed, his long legs an untidy tangle on the floor. Dust clings to his black clothing in grey clumps, and he’s staring down at his hands, at something so small it’s swallowed up in them and Rey can’t catch a glimpse of it.

He looks up at her then, his eyes reddened, hair sticking to the tear-tracks on his cheeks, and he’s never been more beautiful to her than in this unrestrained outpouring of grief.

He doesn’t hold his arms out for her—he knows he doesn’t deserve her comfort. He stares into her eyes instead, and he wants to see revulsion reflected there, he wants her to hate him as much as he hates himself, he wants what he _deserves_.

And he finds none of it.

Rey goes to him, kneels at his side, and gathers him into her arms. She has no absolution to offer him—that was all Han’s, the work of his last living moments. A gentle caress of Ben’s cheek, forgiveness in his eyes, the last-gasp hope burning in him that even this act had not put his son beyond redemption. Ben had felt it all, so Rey has felt it all.

And as he cries in her arms, his tears a gentle, quiet stream now, anguish softening into sorrow—it feels like healing.

* * *

“I can’t believe he kept it,” Ben says, what could be minutes or hours later, as they sit next to each other on the floor, staring down at the little purple and yellow doll in his hands. It’s a tooka doll, he tells her, designed to look like the feline species of the same name, and it was his first toy as a newborn baby, one he’d given up early and can’t remember seeing since he was old enough to walk.

Ben runs a finger over one of the doll’s green eyes. “He was the least sentimental person I’ve ever known.”

Tears prick at Rey’s eyes, and she swallows hard. “I suppose that’s why he kept it hidden here.”

Ben’s face crinkles up, and a tear slips free and rolls down his cheek. “I don’t remember him ever telling me he loved me,” he whispers. “I thought that meant he didn’t. I was never what he wanted me to be.”

“I think,” Rey says quietly, carefully. “Some people feel so deeply, they’re afraid to put words to it.”

Ben looks at her then, a long, searching gaze, and Rey puts her head down on his shoulder, her arms still wrapped around him.

* * *

They decide to take Ben’s ship, a ZH-25 Questor-class light freighter, to Iego, with no discussion between them. Rey knows he’s in too delicate a state at the moment to risk stepping foot on the Falcon, so she follows him to the secure spaceport where he pays to keep it docked long-term.

Teesix rolls up to greet them at the top of the entry ramp, then follows them into the cockpit, beeping its indignation at how late they are and how they haven’t had their dinner. Ben waves a dismissive hand over his shoulder and says they’ll eat once they’re in hyperspace, and Teesix sticks out one of its tool-arms at Ben’s back in what’s probably supposed to be a rude gesture.

“Teesix!” Rey exclaims, but it comes out more of a laugh than as disapproval, and the little droid’s already halfway back to the galley anyway. “Does he always act like that?” Rey asks as she straps herself into the copilot seat.

“When he’s in a good mood.” Ben gives her a lopsided grin. “We love to hate each other.”

* * *

Once they’re safely on their way in the Pabol Hutta hyperspace lane, Ben sets the controls to autopilot and they head to the galley for dinner before Teesix blows a circuit. Rey shovels food in her mouth with her customary enthusiasm, content to stay silent and watch Ben and Teesix bickering in Basic and binary.

She can see that Teesix is good for him, in ways a sweeter, more even-tempered droid might not be. Ben needs someone to prod him out of his moroseness, to challenge his frequent obstinacy, to startle the occasional laugh out of him, and Teesix seems more than up to the task for all of these things. Leia had known what she was doing when she chose the little droid—its function as an astromech was a secondary consideration to its true purpose, though Rey will never breathe a word of that to Ben.

They pilot the ship by turns all the way to Iego, which allows the other to snatch a few hours of sleep at a time in the crew quarters. Rey nearly dozes off in the middle of one of her shifts along the Triellus Trade Route, and has only a vague recollection afterwards of Ben scooping her up into his arms and carrying her to her bunk.

When she wakes up, she takes a sonic shower in the ’fresher and reenters the cockpit to find Ben navigating the little-frequented hyperspace lanes of the Ash Worlds. She drops into the copilot’s seat and straps in, looking over at him, his sleep-mussed hair, his full mouth set in a line of concentration, and an affectionate smile spreads across her face.

“Don’t you dare say it,” Ben warns, though he doesn’t take his eyes off the controls.

“Happy birthday, Ben,” Rey says smugly, then settles back and reaches for the secondary flight controls.

* * *

When they exit the hyperlane into realspace, and Iego comes into view in the distance, Rey sits forward in her seat. It’s a beautiful pink-red swirl from a distance, set against the velvet-black of space, surrounded by at least ten large moons, that Rey can see. As they approach the planet, smaller moons become visible, a disorderly cluster circling the entire planet, and then asteroids, and even smaller satellites, both natural and unnatural ones.

Rey squints out the viewport as Ben begins to cautiously navigate the outskirts of the moon cluster. “Some of this looks like spaceship debris.”

“Some of it is. The Separatists created a laser field during the Clone Wars to prevent any of the inhabitants from leaving. A lot of them died attempting it, by the looks of it.”

Rey angles her head to study the ghostly shell of a small starfighter as they pass close to it, her curiosity more detached than morbid. She’ll always be that scavenger girl from Jakku, deep down, and she’s seen too many skeletons of starships and pilots alike for the sight to bother her anymore.

“Do you think there really are a thousand moons?” she murmurs, her face pressed so close to the transparisteel she’s probably leaving smudges on it.

“I’m sure it’s a colloquial exaggeration,” Ben says, with that sort of snobbish tone he gets sometimes, and Rey knows he doesn’t mean anything by it but she shoots him a sidelong glare anyway. He clears his throat, chastened. “Why don’t you count them?” he says instead, teasing but gentle, and Rey presses her face to the viewport again.

“Maybe I will.”

* * *

They find a wide, flat basaltic spire to land the ship on. The landscape is rugged and hostile for the most part, and they want to stay as far away from the canyons and the carnivorous reeksa that inhabit them as possible. There’s no point in going to Cliffhold, the main center of population, when they need as much dark as possible to moon-gaze.

Rey dashes down the ramp and tips her face heavenward while Ben follows at a more sedate pace. The moons glow more faintly than those of other planets she’s seen, but there are so _many_ of them, stretching from horizon to horizon, all different sizes and shapes and luminosity. “Ohhhh,” she breathes, “they’re beautiful.”

She’s so transported at the sight that she barely notices Ben’s eyes on her, barely notices they’re alone again, in the dark, high in the air under a canopy of moonglow. Rey feels like they’re the last creatures at the edge of the universe here, and it prompts a soft, giddy laugh out of her. She lifts her arms, spinning slowly with her head tipped back to take in the sky at every angle.

She loses her balance when she steps backwards onto a loose rock, but Ben catches her with the Force, and then an arm around her waist, and she laughs again, unfazed, breathless with delight, and cranes her neck back to look at him, this time. His eyes look black in the dark, sparkling with moonglow, and they’re fixed just on her—her eyes, her mouth.

“Ben,” she whispers. “You’re missing the view.”

“I don’t think I am,” he says, his voice a low rumble that sends a wild spike of energy dancing along her veins, but he indulges her and tips his head back too, the ends of his hair, blue-black in the moonlight, brushing his shoulders.

Rey ends up flopping down on her back to ease the strain on her neck, propping her hands behind her head. The rocky ground isn’t comfortable but it’s worth it for the view. Ben eases down to the ground beside her with a bit more dignity, and they lie there in companionable silence for a while. Rey tries to count the moons three times before giving up at the impossibility of the task, deciding she’d rather not know the exact number.

“That Ithorian trader said that angels live on the moons,” Rey remarks at last, in a hushed voice.

“They do,” Ben says, and Rey angles her head to look at him, to see if he’s teasing her, but he’s serious. “The Diathim. No one knows much about them, other than that they have wings and glow white, like they’re made of pure energy.”

“I always thought they were a myth,” Rey confesses. “Like Luke Skywalker.” It overwhelms her sometimes, how small her world had been, compared to the fathomless reaches of the galaxy.

“They’re no myth,” Ben says gravely. “They’re just rare, and exceedingly lovely, and as impossible to grasp as a shooting star.”

There’s a quiet resignation to his voice, and Rey turns her head to look at him again, and somehow she knows he’s not talking about the angels anymore. Rey wets her lips. “How do you know,” she whispers, “if you never even try.”

Ben turns his head too, and meets her eyes, a storm of conflict on his expressive face and swirling in their Force connection, and Rey loses her nerve, dropping her gaze to look at his hair, pooling on the ground beneath his head, exposing one of his overlarge ears. Her fingers twitch, and she’s just about to reach a hand out to it when Ben moves suddenly, propping himself up on one elbow, brushing the fingers of his other hand across her cheek before bending down.

His hair tickles her forehead first, a feather-light touch that’s a prelude to their lips meeting. His mouth is warm, and soft as she’s always known it would be. She brings her fingers up to tangle in his hair, pulling him even closer to her, afraid he might try to pull back after that most tentative of kisses. He groans against her lips when her fingers snag in a tangle of his hair, the sound vibrating against her skin, and Rey likes it.

“Sorry,” she mumbles apologetically against his mouth, though she’s not sorry she’d startled that noise out of him.

“Don’t be,” he murmurs, his voice rough, and Rey pulls his head down again.

She parts her lips when her lungs start to burn—she’s never kissed anyone before and hadn’t realized how difficult it would be to remember to breathe in the midst of it. But he’s still kissing her when she does it, and her tongue brushes his bottom lip inadvertently. He makes a strangled noise in response to that, opening his own mouth, and Rey slips her tongue inside like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

When they break apart to pant for breath, Ben shifts, leveraging his body over her. Rey parts her legs to make room for him, and he braces an arm on either side of her head, keeping his weight mostly off of her. His eyes are hooded, fixed on her lips, and Rey cranes her neck up to kiss him again.

When his lips travel down to her neck and a spot just beneath her ear, an embarrassing, shaky moan escapes her. He parts his mouth, pressing the heat of his tongue to her neck, and there’s a hint of teeth, and her fingers clutch reflexively in his hair and her hips jerk upwards instinctively, hitting the heavy solid warmth of him for a moment, and she sees stars.

It occurs to her only distantly that he’s murmuring her name with concern, that he’s moved one of his hands to cradle the back of her head, that there’s a dull pain there, and—was she so lost in him she’d smacked her head on the ground without even noticing?

“I’m fine,” she reassures him sheepishly, her eyes lingering on his mouth. She just wants to keep kissing him, but Ben presses a kiss to her temple instead, murmuring against her hair that they should go inside.

Rey lies back against his hand, still cushioning her head from the rocky ground beneath it, and considers him, running a lock of his hair between two of her fingers absently. On the one hand, she came to Iego to see the moons, and there are still hours of night left. On the other hand, Ben is finally, enthusiastically, giving in to what they’ve both wanted for _years_ , if she’s honest with herself. There’s still conflict brewing in his body though—Rey can feel it, his heart unwilling to let her go even as his mind tells him he must, it’s not right, he doesn’t deserve this.

“What are we going to do inside?” Rey asks with exaggerated innocence, blinking up at him.

Ben groans and hangs his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “Sleep,” he mumbles helplessly.

Rey scowls at that, and even more when she notices he’s leveraged most his weight off of her, and he’s keeping his hips carefully away from hers.

Ben’s head snaps up when one of Rey’s hands starts to wander down to investigate exactly why that is, and he shifts, seizing her wrist before she can reach her destination. “Rey.” His voice is ragged, and what was meant as a warning comes out more like a plea for mercy.

Rey takes pity on him, for now, and flings both her arms around his neck instead. “Carry me,” she commands, and he obeys.

He tries to swoop her up into his arms at first, but Rey clings to him stubbornly, wrapping her legs around his waist as he rises to his feet with considerably less than his usual grace. Rey giggles when he loses his footing for a moment on a loose rock, his hand finally slipping to a less polite position on her ass, clutching her close in a reflexive move to prevent her from falling. His ears flame red once he rights himself, his hand slipping back up to her waist and a mumbled apology on his lips, but Rey just rolls her eyes and peppers his face with kisses.

Ben bumps into four bulkheads on the way to the crew quarters, and every one of them is Rey’s fault for distracting him, mouthing at the scar on his neck here, nipping at his earlobe there. When he hits his knee against the double bunks in the crew quarters, Rey swallows his muttered curse with her mouth, and Ben spins them around again, straight through the door into the captain’s quarters, where the bunk is still narrow but the ceiling is high enough that they won’t be bumping their heads.

He stumbles back against the bunk and lands in a sitting position, Rey on his lap, a knee on either side of his legs. She untangles her hands from around his neck but keeps her arms braced on his broad shoulders, blinking down at him, enjoying the way he tips his head back to look up at her, the way his throat bobs when she rakes her fingers through his hair, the way his fingers tighten on her hips when she presses _down_.

“Rey,” he pants against her collarbone when she shifts closer, pressing herself down harder against him, and she hits a spot that startles a whimper out of her, embarrassingly loud in the quiet room, and her first instinct is to bury her face in his shoulder, but instead some bolder, braver part of her takes hold, and she tips her head back, moving against him, trying to find that feeling again.

He’s sucking gently on her neck when she does, and this time he groans at the feeling as well, and Rey doesn’t know if it’s his own pleasure or a reaction to hers, but she’s far too distracted to sort out the dividing line between them.

The world tilts, and Rey’s kissing him on the lips again, and he’s collapsed on his back with her draped on top of him, the press of her breasts against his chest a sensation she’s never contemplated before, but she suddenly wants _more_ of it, and she presses closer—she wants to wrap herself up inside him, she wants to swallow him whole.

“Ben,” she gasps shakily, the word coming out as two syllables when he clutches her hips even tighter, pulling her down at a new angle just as he lifts his own hips, and Rey’s mouth drops open, no sound escaping even as her body seizes up, white-hot electricity shooting through every nerve-end in her body, a closed circuit loop of pleasure. Distantly, she registers the muffled groan Ben makes against her neck, and they both still, nothing but their quickened breaths filling the silence.

When Rey returns to herself, she’s slumped gracelessly across Ben, her cheek squashed up against his shoulder. He’s dropped his head back against the pillow, one arm thrown over his eyes. The other, she notes with satisfaction, is still looped around her waist possessively.

A strange sound rumbles out of his chest and up his throat, almost like a growl of frustration, and Rey can only see bits of his profile from the angle she’s looking at him, and half his face is hidden behind his ridiculously huge forearm, but she _swears_ his cheeks are flushed red.

“Did we just—” Rey whispers breathlessly, and Ben gives a disconsolate grunt, still refusing to look at her.

Rey bites her lip, awkwardness taking hold for a moment—but this is _Ben_. Embarrassment is pointless when they have the ability to expose their inmost feelings to each other with a thought.

“We didn’t even get our clothes off,” she says, and there’s teasing warmth in her voice which she hopes will coax him out of his mortification. He takes everything so deeply to heart; she thinks it must be exhausting sometimes.

He doesn’t move his arm, but the corner of his full mouth gives a telltale twitch upwards. Rey leans toward him, bumping her nose against his jaw, and he relents, removing his arm from his eyes in favor of brushing her hair back from her forehead, his gaze roving over her face. There’s still a hint of pink on his cheeks, but she’s soothed away the worst of his embarrassment.  

“That’s what you do to me,” he says, and his eyes are dark and vulnerable, and it’s Rey’s turn to flush.

She drops her eyes to his neck, picking at the collar of his shirt. “It’s what we do to each other,” she corrects softly.

Ben stares at her for a moment longer, then gives a lopsided, rueful smile. “I need to change.”

* * *

She’s half-afraid when Ben returns from the ’fresher he’ll exile himself to a bunk in the crew quarters, and she’s already formulating plans to sneak in next to him after he’s fallen asleep, if it comes to that, when Ben makes his reappearance, clad in soft black sleeping clothes now.

“That won’t be necessary,” he says dryly, and Rey happily shifts over in the bunk to make room for him, not caring in the least about his eavesdropping.

It’s far too small for them, really—everything is too small for Ben, and Rey may be slim but she’s tall—but she’s determined to make it work. After some shifting, Ben ends up on his back, Rey on her side, tucked up against him, an arm slung over his stomach, a leg thrown over his thigh.

When she leans in to kiss his neck, though, he stiffens under her, and Rey pulls back, searching his face in the dark.

He sighs, and it’s heavy, regretful. “I can’t….” His voice is a low murmur. “...be with you like that, and let you go.”

Rey swallows hard, her mouth gone dry, and Ben turns to look at her, bringing a hand up to trace his thumb across her bottom lip. “So come with me,” Rey whispers when his thumb stills at the corner of her mouth.

There’s something inside him still that shies away from that suggestion, like a wild suubatar unaccustomed to a rider’s touch. Rey swallows down her disappointment. She’s not always the most patient person—Master Luke would be the first to tell her that—but giving Ben the space he needs requires every bit of it she can muster. His choices now, in the wake of his dark deeds, as he searches for peace, will be meaningless if they’re not his own.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his tone pained, and their Force connection vibrates as if in protest against their self-imposed chastity.

Rey huffs out a laugh, lowering her head to rest her cheek against his chest, just below his heart. “I can’t believe _you’re_ the one showing restraint in this situation.”

“Believe me,” he says, his voice dark and full of promise, “restraint is the last thing I want to show.”

His tone lances straight down to her bones, heating her entire body. “Stop that!” Rey complains. “You can’t say no and then say things like _that_.”

Ben actually chuckles then, the sound warm and vibrating under her ear, and she smiles in the dark despite herself. He’s saved them both from heartache, she thinks, for she can’t imagine parting from him once they’ve bridged that final intimacy, once they know each other mind, soul, _and_ body. It’s torturous enough being parted from him now, their connection stretched unnaturally thin across half the galaxy. It’s at peace now, contented, as they’re wrapped in each other’s arms, but Rey knows when she leaves for Coruscant it will pain them all the more.

“Just promise me one thing,” she whispers into the dark.

“Anything.” His answer is so instinctive, it’s out of his mouth before she’s finished speaking, a universe of possibility in that single word.

Rey reaches her index finger up to trace the beloved line of his prominent nose. “Don’t make us wait until we’re old and grey, Ben Solo.”

That startles a real, rusty laugh out of him, and he tightens his arms around her, pressing a kiss to the top of her head, and it feels like both hope and a promise at once.

Rey knows all about waiting, and this is worth waiting for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The sabacc scene on Nar Shaddaa is inspired by the scene where Leia plays (and wins) in Bloodline.
> 
> Lars Quell was the fake name Anakin used when he went undercover in [this episode of The Clone Wars](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Slaves_of_the_Republic). (Ben obviously doesn't know this, but like grandfather, like grandson lol.)
> 
> Han had an apartment in the Corellian Sector of Nar Shaddaa in Legends, and I didn't think it was too much of a stretch that he would keep one in canon for smuggling purposes, and that he never gave it up even after he married Leia, so he always had somewhere to escape to if need be. Ben's tooka doll is mentioned in one of the Aftermath books.
> 
> [Ben's ship](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/ZH-25_Questor-class). It's no TIE Silencer, but he's trying to be lowkey.
> 
> The story Ben tells about Iego is from [this episode of The Clone Wars](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mystery_of_a_Thousand_Moons). And yes, he absolutely shamelessly compares Rey to an angel. Terrible flirting runs in the family.
> 
> [Listen to the soundtrack here](https://open.spotify.com/user/greysecondchances/playlist/4HwkCxQkvWINMXPC3hWma0).


	4. Raxus

_Raxus_

_One standard year later_

 

“Come again?” The diminutive Gossam blinks up at Rey from her seat behind the ticket counter, apparently startled out of her boredom by Rey’s odd request.

“I said,” Rey repeats patiently, “one ticket for the children’s tour, please.”

The Gossam leans forward on her elevated stool, craning her long neck from side to side as if searching for a small child at Rey’s feet. When none is forthcoming, she sits back and wrinkles her face at Rey—at least, Rey thinks she does. Her face is very wrinkled in its natural state.

“One ticket for the children’s tour,” she croaks, swiping Rey’s credit chip and handing it over. “Next!”

Rey tucks it back into her pocket and ascends the stairs at the grand entrance to the Raxus History Museum, a vast building situated at the edge of the capital city of Raxulon, where the sprawling urban center begins to give way to the lush, rolling hills of the countryside. It’s connected to a university and mainly used for research purposes, but open to the general public as well.

Rey stops for a moment in the vast entry hall, soaking in the unfamiliar surroundings—the huge holomap of exhibits in the center of the room, the pristine transparisteel boxes which enclose ancient artifacts, the small groups of rambunctious children dashing around here and there. She still can’t believe Ben’s started working here—of all places—until she spots him in a blue docent uniform across the room, surrounded by a sea of small children, most of whom barely reach his waist.

He’s smiling down at a tiny, huge-eyed Mon Calamari when he notices Rey’s presence, lifting his head to meet her eyes from across the room, and Rey is struck by how gentle his face looks, how relaxed his limbs are, how peaceful he feels in the Force. She walks toward him, and neither of them take their eyes off each other, even when she comes to a stop, the cluster of small children dividing them.

“Hello, Ben,” she says softly, and a wistful smile twists his mouth as his eyes rove all over her. He’s missed her, _fiercely_ —she can feel it.

He breaks the spell abruptly when he turns away, addressing the children again. “This is Rey,” he tells them, gesturing to her, not bothering with an alias this time. Raxus is at peace. The galaxy is at peace, and no one’s going to care what one woman is doing on an Outer Rim planet, no matter how Force sensitive that woman is. “She’s going to join us on our tour.”

Several of the children look up at her shyly, and a little Togruta slips her hand into Rey’s. “I like your hair,” she whispers.

“Thank you,” Rey replies, genuinely touched. Though she wears her hair many different ways these days, she’s thrown it up into her three-bun style again, the one she still finds most practical for travel.

When she looks up, she catches Ben staring at her again. There’s a spark of humor in his eyes, the briefest upward curl of his lips, and then he turns, leading their little group deeper into the museum.

Rey lingers at the back, observing Ben far more than the historical artifacts. He’s gentle, patient with the children’s many questions—though by no means perfect. Often, he forgets himself and uses words too complicated for them to understand, not even realizing he’s done it until someone prompts him for further explanation. His humor still tends to the biting, the sarcastic—which flies over most of the children’s heads. But they seem to like him, all the same—their initial trepidation at his huge size and tendency to frown morphing into excitement when he hoists them up into the air one at a time for a better view. Before long, they’re tugging at his jacket, clamoring for his attention, and he indulges them all, hints of a genuine, lopsided smile flashing across his face as he does so.

“Mr. Antilles, what’s that?” a little Rodian breathes, his star-field eyes wide with wonder as they gather around a small, intricately carved gold box inside a transparisteel case, set in the middle of a room as all the most rare exhibits are.

“That,” Ben replies softly, “is a holocron. It’s said only a Jedi can open it.” His voice catches on the word, but it’s so faint only Rey notices.

The little Rodian’s forehead crinkles. “So no one will ever be able to open it?” he asks sadly.

Ben breathes in deeply, tilting his head, his eyes fixed on the holocron. “You don’t have to be a Jedi to use the Force,” he murmurs, almost to himself, then turns abruptly and leads them to the next exhibit before the children can ask any more questions about it.

Before the tour is over, Rey makes sure to slyly inform her little Togruta companion that it’s Ben’s birthday, and before long all the children know, and they insist on singing to him, despite Ben’s flustered protests that they need to be quiet in a museum. Rey stands off to the side, her mouth contorting as she tries to hold in a laugh. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen a stranger, more welcome sight than a group of delighted children belting out a birthday song at the top of their lungs, holding Ben hostage in the middle as he crosses his arms over his chest, trying and failing to look annoyed.

* * *

Afterwards, they sit on the museum’s front steps as they wait for the children’s parents to collect them one at a time.

Rey leans over, bumping her arm against Ben’s. “I still can’t believe you convinced a prestigious museum to hire you,” she says in a low voice.

Ben arches an eyebrow at her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have an advanced degree in antiquities from the University of Bar’leth.”

Rey huffs out a laugh. “I’m sure you do.”

Ben’s generous mouth tips up into a smirk and he leans back, propping his elbows on the step behind him. Rey watches the play of late-afternoon sunshine across his face, how the light catches the rich brown of his eyes, the way the breeze ruffles through his hair, and she thinks this is what peace looks like.

* * *

In the privacy of his apartment in the heart of the city, Rey slides off the couch and kneels before him on the floor, taking both of his hands in hers and looking up at him earnestly. “I have a gift for you.”

“I never doubted it.” Ben’s tone is wry, but his body tenses, wariness rolling off him in waves, and Rey thinks maybe he knows what she’s been sent to give him.

She reaches into her bag and draws it out, the cylindrical silver metal cool against her fingers, and presses it into his hands.

“Luke thinks it’s time,” she says in a low voice, her eyes fixed on his face. “And so do I.”

Ben stares down at his grandfather’s lightsaber, holding it gingerly between his fingers as though it might burn him. And it has, Rey thinks as her eyes wander over the faint scar that bisects his right eye.

“And what about what I think?” he grinds out.

It’s strange, watching the revulsion that flickers over his face, down to the very core of his being, as he holds his grandfather’s lightsaber—his birthright—in his hands. How much he’d coveted it once, how angrily he’d fought for it, the desperation he’d felt when it betrayed him, flying right past him into Rey’s hands—the jealousy, the unrestrained _awe_.

“You don’t have to be worthy of it,” Rey pleads. “There’s nothing to be worthy of.”

His grandfather’s legacy remains—a weight still crushing him. Not that of Darth Vader anymore, but Anakin Skywalker. It was always Anakin Skywalker, the entirety of it, the dark and the light, the love and the lies and the betrayal, and it’s a weight he’s carried since the day he was born, without knowing it, and it’s a weight he will carry the rest of his life. But he’s learned how to shoulder it now, she thinks, and he’s learned how to share it, he’s learned how to prevent it from swallowing him whole.

“That’s just the thing,” Ben chokes out in a low voice. “Do you know what this lightsaber has _done_?”

Rey knows, Rey has felt it—the crystal at its heart still crying out at the pain of it. It’s one of the reasons she couldn’t keep using it for long, why she felt the need to build her own lightsaber.

“Maybe it’s because I’ve done the same,” Ben continues. “Maybe it’s because I’ve touched the dark so completely, but it _hurts_ just to hold it, like my touch is calling up all of its worst deeds.” He shakes his head. “This lightsaber doesn’t belong to me.”

He drops it back into her hands and Rey runs her fingers over it, deep in thought. It belongs to no one, now, and maybe it’s finally free. She deposits it back in her bag, gently, then brings a hand up to tug at the leather string around her neck, pulling it free from under her shirt.

Ben stares at the jagged white crystal resting on her chest now, cradled at the end of the string in an intricate nest of thin leather straps.

“Is that—” he breathes, reaching out a hand but stopping just short of touching it.

Rey nods.

“You healed it,” Ben whispers reverently, his eyes wandering up her chest to her face. “And you kept it.”

“Half of it.” Rey gives a wry smile. “I needed the other half to prove Kylo Ren was dead.”

She can feel the conflict raging in Ben, his eyes lingering on her mouth like he wants to kiss her, even as shame rises like bile up his throat as he contemplates how he’d made the crystal bleed, how it’d cracked under the instability of his Force powers, what he’d made the crystal do, how many it had killed.

“I can’t use that.” He speaks the words like a solemn oath.

“I’m not asking you to.” Rey keeps her eyes on his, her presence in their Force connection serene, and it calms him, it steadies him. “I’m asking you to remember. I’m asking you to start fresh.”

Ben’s face is still wary, but deep in his dark eyes, there’s a spark of hope. “I don’t know if I can do that,” he says in a broken whisper. He drops his head, closing his eyes.

“I do,” Rey says fiercely, taking his face in both of her hands and shifting closer, pressing her forehead carefully to his, closing her own eyes.

_The crystal is the heart of the blade_ , she recites into their connection. _The heart is the crystal of the Jedi. The Jedi is the crystal of the Force._

_The Force is the blade of the heart_ . His thoughts mingle with hers, on that one and the next. _You are one_.

Ben remains still for a moment, his forehead pressed against hers, their noses brushing, breathing in the same air. When he raises his head and draws back from her, his eyes are clear.

“I’m not a Jedi,” he says, and it’s not denial or regret, it just is.

A smile blooms across Rey’s face. He’s ready, at long last. “Neither am I.”

* * *

They take the Falcon to Ahch-To, though there’s a moment where Ben hesitates, just before entering the cockpit, and Rey thinks he’s going to retreat. He takes in a shuddery breath, his hands pressed against the bulkheads framing the doorway, and Rey sits sideways in the pilot’s seat, watching him, waiting to see what he does.

Teesix breaks the spell by bumping into his legs from behind. Ben shifts on his feet and the little droid rolls past him into the cockpit, asking Rey in a series of indignant beeps if she knows that she’s about to take a pile of junk into hyperspace.

Rey bites her lip, eyes darting to Ben—and his shoulders are still shaking, but with reluctant laughter this time, stifled and quiet as Ben’s laughter always is, but undeniably there. He scrubs a hand through his hair, and takes a step into the cockpit, running his eyes over the worn seats, the ancient controls. “She may not look like much,” he murmurs, “but she’s got it where it counts.”

He reaches a hand up, brushing his finger against the small gold dice hanging above his head, and his eyes grow distant, his throat bobbing, and his other hand clutches reflexively at the back of Rey’s seat. But when he takes the copilot seat and turns to her expectantly, his eyes are clear. “You ready?” he asks, and Rey takes the controls.

* * *

It’s surreal, even after all this time, even with Kylo Ren long put to rest, to be flying Ben to Ahch-To. After all the misery he’d put everyone through looking for it, after all the effort Rey had expended to keep it a secret from him, years ago. He already knows where it is, of course, having chased her there from halfway across the galaxy to interrupt her training—an action that had ended disastrously for all of them.

Or maybe not, she thinks, looking over at him now as they emerge into realspace over Ahch-To—the cockpit lights highlighting the angles of his face, his mouth pressed into a line of concentration as he leans over to flip a switch.

_You imagine an ocean_.

Maybe the ocean has been him, all along.

* * *

Most of the porgs stay well away from them, their memories far too clear of the last time Ben landed on their island, but the braver ones among them flock to the craggy rocks as Rey and Ben disembark from the Falcon, fixing the two of them with large, distrustful eyes. They’d never quite come to accept Rey as they had Luke, but their interest in her wanes quickly once they ascertain she means them no harm. Their attention is all on Ben now, as they hop closer, croaking threateningly, twitching their stubby wings to make themselves look bigger.

Ben looks at them, his forehead crinkling in thought, and then he sits on the ground, crossing his legs, back straight and hands resting on his knees, and it takes Rey a moment to realize he’s meditating.

She joins him, then, the centering exercise looping between them as they breathe in sync, their minds as one. The porgs creep closer to inspect them, and Rey can feel the creatures calm as the serenity of her Force connection with Ben washes over them.

When Rey opens her eyes, the porgs have disappeared.

They’ve accepted Ben’s presence on their island, and whatever he’s there to do.

* * *

The kyber crystal cave is located deep beneath the island, the entrance completely submerged even at low tide. Rey has ventured there only once before, to find her own crystals, but she leads Ben down the steep, winding rock stairs to a small beach like she’s trodden that path a hundred times.

“The water’s frigid,” she warns, and the wind whips their hair across their faces as if to agree with her.

Ben looks down at his clothes, considering, then raises his arms, grabbing the back of his shirt and yanking it off in one smooth movement. Rey’s eyes fall to his bare torso, helplessly, and her breath catches in her throat at the pale expanse of his stomach, the play of muscles beneath the skin, the scar she’d burned into his right shoulder with his grandfather’s lightsaber, the constellation of beauty marks that trails down his neck onto his chest, as she’s always known they would. And last of all, what catches and holds her gaze—the scar on his chest, just to the left of his heart, lightning carved into his skin, the blow he’d taken for her. Her feet carry her forward without her permission, and she stretches an arm out, her fingers brushing against the scar tissue, then downwards, tracing a line across his abdominal muscles until they catch on the waistband of his pants. Ben sways towards her for a moment, and then he takes her hand gently in his.

“Later,” he says, his voice low and full of promise, and it sends goosebumps that have nothing to do with the cold wind up Rey’s arms.

He crouches down, adding his shirt to the waterproof pack he’ll be carrying on his back, and just before he closes it, Rey crouches next to him, pulling Anakin’s lightsaber out of the pouch attached to her belt and setting it carefully on top of his shirt. A look passes between them, and he doesn’t need to ask her what it’s for.

When they straighten, Rey hugs her arms to her chest, tossing her windblown hair out of her face. “Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?”

Ben reaches out a hand, tugging a few stray wisps of hair out from between her lips. “This is the last thing,” he says gravely, “I need to do alone.”

Rey swallows hard, taking his hand in her own and pressing her lips to the back of it. “May the Force be with you,” she says, and he nods, shouldering his pack and turning away to wade into the crashing waves.

* * *

Ben doesn’t return for three days, and the overwhelming power of the Force on Ahch-To makes their connection difficult to sense apart from everything else. Most places in the galaxy, his presence is like a drop of water rolling down her skin, impossible to miss, but here she’s submerged in an ocean of the Force, and it’s nearly impossible to extricate Ben’s water drop from the millions of others pressing in on her.

It makes her restless, unsettled, to not know exactly where he is and what he’s doing, and Teesix scolds her more than once that she’s going to wear a hole through the already questionably thin galley floor of the Falcon with her pacing. So she takes to running instead, up and down the endless treacherous stairs of Ahch-To, until her lungs feel ready to burst out of her chest, and then she halts on the cliff’s edge, igniting her saberstaff and flowing into her lightsaber forms without pause.

* * *

She’s attempting to meditate on a rocky outcropping, dizzyingly high above the ocean, where she can see the chain of islands stretching out to the blue horizon, when she feels him again, the warmth of his presence rushing back into her chest, flamelike, all-consuming, and she almost sobs in relief.

Rey waits for him in a flat, grassy area within sight of the cluster of huts, and when he crests a hill and comes into view she sways on her feet, only just stopping herself from running to him. His hair is damp and wind-blown, his black shirt sticking tight to his arms and torso, and his eyes—she could get lost in them. But what really seizes her attention is his presence in the Force. He’s never felt so steady, so balanced.

He stops a few paces away from her, and drops his pack to the ground. His hands go to his belt, and he unclips a lightsaber from it, holding it out for her inspection.

It’s Anakin’s lightsaber—but it isn’t. He’s taken it apart piece by piece and put it back together in a new way, his own way, and it’s not as elegant as Anakin’s had been, still rugged and rough around the edges to fit its wielder, but there’s none of the raw, unfinished instability of Ben’s previous lightsaber about it.

“No vents,” she notes, conversationally.

Ben’s mouth twitches. “I’m hoping I don’t need them, this time.”

Rey’s eyes dart up to his. “You haven’t ignited it yet?”

Ben shakes his head, a hint of doubt creeping in to accost his newfound peace. He’s afraid—afraid he’s bent the crystal unnaturally to his will again, afraid he’s constructed the lightsaber wrong, afraid after everything that the blade might tell him what he’s feared deep down all along.

_You have too much faith in me_ , he sighs across their connection, an echo of his uncle’s words to her years before, and Rey shakes her head. _I have just enough faith in you_.

She unclips her saberstaff from her belt, igniting the deep-green blades one at a time, swirling it around and shifting on her feet into an Ataru opening stance.

Something quivers in their connection as Ben rakes his eyes over her, and Rey realizes he’s been _longing_ for this—and so has she. They haven’t been enemies for years—and maybe they never were, truly—but neither of them have ever felt so _alive_ as they do standing across from each other, sabers lit, the Force swirling around them as they clash in this most familiar, exhilarating of dances.

Rey shifts her feet farther apart, jerking her chin, daring him to attack.

Ben tilts his head, his eyes darkening, and obliges her. His saber ignites—and both of them only spare a second to take in the brilliant, silvery-white blade—and he twirls it at his side, just like he had that night in the moonlit forest on Starkiller. Then he’s moving, quick and graceful, bearing down on her with one of his signature overhead spins, and Rey holds her ground, grinning ferociously, her blood _singing_ , and brings one of her blades up to stop his.

They pause for a moment, eyes meeting over their crossed blades, faces lit by green and silver fire, no stray sparks to bite into their skin this time. His blade is smooth, unmarred by jagged spikes of plasma. He’s not that rough, unfinished thing anymore, and neither is his lightsaber.

Ben leans in, pressing down with all his considerable strength, a hint of danger in his eyes, and Rey ducks and spins away, throwing him off-balance and forcing him to leap away from the low swirl of her double blade.

He rights himself, giving his saber a few experimental whirls again. Rey can tell it’s going to take him a while to get used to it—he’s accustomed to fighting his own blade almost as much as fighting an opponent. His new lightsaber cuts through the air effortlessly, sharp and light and accurate, and it will require that he move his body differently—less reckless hurling of his muscular bulk around, more calculated grace.

“Reckless hurling?” he splutters, offended, and Rey laughs, leaping up and over her blade then shifting it in a blur behind her back for the sheer joy of it. She only stills her saberstaff when Ben comes after her again, bringing it up in a defensive motion once more, then launching into an acrobatic series of attacks that force Ben to take the defensive.

They fight for what feels like hours, back and forth across the grass, breathless and intense and so _right_ , a fevered euphoria seizing hold of both of them now that they’re allowing themselves this thing their bodies were _meant_ to do, so long denied.

Rey doesn’t know why it’s this physicality, this clashing of plasma blades, this intricate, deadly dance they move in like one spirit in two bodies, that makes them feel complete, but she knows it’s neither of the dark or the light. It’s just _them_ —it always has been and it always will be, and it’s the most natural thing in the world when Rey leans in, pressing one of her blades down against his, then twisting up and _out_ , his blade disengaging, hilt spiraling away as she disarms him. She disengages her saberstaff, tossing it away at nearly the same moment that Ben seizes her around the waist, hauling her up against him and dipping his head down to press their lips together.

And this is another ancient dance, similar in some ways, different in others, but every bit as intoxicating. Rey brings her hands up to tangle in his hair, opening her mouth and darting her tongue against his lips, nearly growling in triumph when he parts them, and she presses her tongue against his, the feeling igniting like a live wire straight down to her bones, and she wants to devour him.

He’s sucking bruises into her neck when Rey realizes they’re still standing out in the open in the middle of the island. There are no creatures in sight at the moment, but the island is far from uninhabited, and the last thing she wants is to do this with an audience.

“Ben,” she gasps, trying to tug his head up, but he mistakes the motion for ardor and doubles down, pulling her even closer against him. “Ben,” she laughs, tipping her head back to give him better access to her neck despite herself. “We should go somewhere private,” she manages, her voice shaky, pressing her intent into their Force connection, and he raises his head at last.

His pupils are blown wide, his full lips kiss-bruised, and his chest is heaving far more than it had during their lengthy sparring session. “Where?” he asks in a low voice, the word carrying a single-minded intent that makes Rey go weak at the knees.

“A hut,” is all she manages to get out before he’s scooped her up into his arms, and she’s wrapped her legs around his waist again, vice-like, an echo of that night on Iego, but this time his footsteps don’t falter.

Ben starts to duck down through a doorway, and Rey twists to the side, awareness of something other than him crashing down. “No, not this one!” Her voice comes out in a panicked squeak, and Ben freezes, his brows furrowing as he looks up at her.

“This was Luke’s hut,” she manages, body shaking around a stifled laugh, and Ben’s eyebrows shoot up in alarm. She’s never seen him move so fast.

They’re in another hut before she has time to blink, and this one startles a breathless laugh out of her, because it’s _hers_ , and she can’t imagine what the Rey who’d slept in that hut would have to say if she could see herself _now_ , see herself clinging to Ben’s broad frame, mouthing at the scar she put on his neck, reaching down to give a frustrated tug at the hem of his shirt.

Ben deposits her gently on the low bed and pulls his shirt off over his head, and Rey is distracted from complaining that _she_ wanted to do that by the sight of his abs on full display, just in front of her face. She scrambles up to her knees and moves to him, pressing open-mouthed kisses against his skin. She can feel the flex of his muscles underneath, a reaction to her touch. Entranced, she brings her hands up to his hips, dipping her thumbs just below his waistband to feel the jut of his hipbones.

“Rey,” he grits out, his head falling forward, and his hands are clumsy at her shoulders, so clumsy that it takes her a moment to realize he’s trying to remove her vest. She shrugs it off hastily, her fingers shifting down immediately after to loosen her belt, and Ben already has her shirt halfway up her torso before she’s done. She raises her arms so he can get it off the rest of the way, followed by her arm wraps, and then his hands are in her hair, gently tugging it free of its buns until it falls in disarray around her bare shoulders.

Ben pauses for a moment, one hand in her hair, and leans back to take her in. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted you like this?” he breathes, and Rey’s heart is beating out of her chest. She does know—they _both_ know—so instead of answering, she leans in to kiss him again.

She’s scrabbling at her breastband now, but her stupid fingers won’t work fast enough, and Ben stills her hands with his, taking his time unraveling it. Rey’s chest heaves with impatience, but she keeps her eyes on his face, determined to drink in his reactions, too self-conscious to look down at herself. She only knows he’s finished unwrapping it by the cool air that peaks her nipples, by the ragged breath he draws in before dipping his head down and mouthing at one of her breasts.

The sensation startles an embarrassing, breathy moan out of her, and she wraps her hand around the back of his head, holding him there, as if he had any inclination to move. She can _feel_ how fascinated he is, how enthralled, and she’s never had much cause to consider her breasts, as small and sometimes inconvenient as they are, but the way Ben flicks his tongue over them, the way he pulls one nipple into his mouth and _sucks_ , the way he brings a hand up to brush a thumb over the soft skin—it’s worth every single moment on Jakku that she’d wished them away.

She’s chanting his name breathlessly into the air, and it’s like his mouth has seized on some cord that carries a straight line down to her core, and she hauls his head up, twining her arms around his neck and kissing him again, pressing their chests together, skin to skin at last.

“Rey,” he murmurs against her mouth, and she silences him with more kisses, pressing even closer, wanting to sink into him.

Ben angles forward, and Rey falls back against the bed, and he moves down to tug her boots off, and then, so quickly she doesn’t even have time to feel self-conscious, her pants and her underwear. He lingers at the end of the bed, pressing a kiss to the arch of her foot. “I wanted to do this that night on Shu-Torun,” he murmurs against her foot, and Rey’s heart stutters at that, but she plasters a scowl on her face. “I wanted you to do much more than that,” she rejoins grumpily, though the effect is somewhat ruined by the breathiness of her voice.

Ben’s mouth is moving now, pressing kisses to her ankle, her calf, the side of her knee, angling his head to press his mouth behind her knee and Rey squeals involuntarily, the heel of her other foot flying out to jab him in the lower back. Ben stops. “Ticklish?” he asks, in an almost academic voice, like he’s storing that information away for later.

“Kriff you,” Rey mutters, narrowing her eyes as she props herself on her elbows, looking down at him—but she’s immediately distracted from her pretend-anger by the reminder that she’s _completely naked_ and Ben can _see_.

Her cheeks flame, but she can’t take her eyes off the mesmerizing sight of him progressing up her inner thigh with hot, open-mouthed kisses, and his lips, _his lips_ —

“What about my lips?” he mumbles into the sensitive skin of her thigh, a spark of mischief in his eyes, and Rey’s mouth drops open.

“I’m going to murder you,” she gasps out, squeezing her eyes shut as he starts moving upwards again.

“Not just yet, I hope,” he says, and then his mouth is on her, and her entire body jerks under him, her elbows giving out as she falls back against the bed.

Ben shifts, bracing a muscular forearm over her hips to keep her still, then leans in again, and the fleeting brush of the heat of his tongue against her is almost enough to make her come right then and there. “Ben,” she pleads, and he flicks his tongue a few more times, then moves his lips and _sucks_ and a strange, keening noise escapes Rey’s throat.

He draws back again, panting, and the sudden removal of pleasure has Rey propping herself up on her elbows to see what he’s doing. His hair falls soft against the skin of her stomach, against the raised scar of her Force lightning burn, and he’s pressed his face into her hipbone. All she can see is the tight line of his jaw as he struggles for control.

“Ben?” she asks, worry in her voice now. “Are you okay?”

He chokes out a laugh. “I’m more than okay. I’m just—I’m trying not to—I can _feel_ everything you’re feeling.”

“Oh,” she says, trying and failing to focus on Ben’s dilemma instead of the pleasant way his nose is pressing against her hip. “Well, that’s good, right? It’ll make everything...easier.” Rey flaps a helpless hand against the bed, not knowing how to put words to any of this.

“Good for _you_ ,” he corrects gently, increasing the pressure of his forearm on her hips when she twitches them upwards unconsciously. “A bit more of a—struggle,” he squeezes his eyes shut. “For me.”

Understanding dawns, finally slipping through the fog of lust her brain’s apparently been dipped in. She stretches a hand down, caressing his scarred cheek in her palm and urging him to look up at her. He does—his mussed hair falling over his forehead, his dark eyes intense, but an almost mournful expression hovers over his face, like he thinks he’s failing her somehow.

“Ben Solo,” she says fondly, “I’ve been waiting for you for _years_. Nothing you do could disappoint me.”

“That’s what you think _now_ ,” he mutters darkly, and Rey’s lips twist up, remembering the terrifying creature in a mask, how she could never in a thousand years have dreamed he’d be the very same as this wrecked, self-conscious man.

“It’s the truth,” Rey insists fiercely. “Now shut up and _touch me_.”

He obeys with alacrity, pressing his mouth to her once more, and Rey lets out a slow, shuddery breath, trying to regulate the noises rising unbidden from her mouth. When she feels like she needs to grab hold of something, she buries her fingers in his hair, perhaps a little too violently, for he groans against her, the sound vibrating up through her body and it feels so good it startles a whimper out of her. Ben likes these noises she’s making, so she stops trying to stifle them so much, and he rewards her by sinking a finger inside, just to the second knuckle at first, then drawing it back and sinking in fully. Rey bites her lip at the foreign sensation, inhaling shakily when a second finger joins it, and he presses up just as he sucks in sharply with his mouth, and Rey’s release hits her with a suddenness that knocks her breathless, bucking against his mouth and fingers as her thighs grip his head reflexively.

He’s murmuring endearments against her as she gentles, and he withdraws his fingers from inside her carefully, even as her body protests against the motion. When Rey finds the strength to prop herself up on her elbows again, she meets his gaze, and he’s looking up at her with the same reverence she’s seen in his eyes before—when she claimed the lightsaber meant for him, when she turned Snoke’s own Force lightning against him.

She holds out a hand to him—she needs him in her arms _now_ —and he climbs up her body obediently, bracketing her between his biceps, and she tugs his head down to kiss him fiercely, pouring everything she feels for him into the open flow of the Force between them. He knows—surely he _has_ to know.

He pulls his head back, his dark hair forming a curtain around his face, unfathomable tenderness in his eyes, and she feels what he’s about to say before he says it, the absolute certainty of it, the determination.

“I love you,” he says, his voice low and sure even as it breaks at the end, his eyes wet, and he doesn’t want to be his father. He doesn’t want to leave it unsaid.

Ben blurs above her suddenly, and it takes Rey a moment to realize that _she’s_ crying, and all at once Ben’s hands are on her face, and he’s pressing kisses to her cheeks, her forehead, her eyelids, her nose, and he’s anxious to know what’s wrong, but he wants her to have her tears.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Rey chokes out on another sob, aware how ridiculous that sounds.

“Then why are you crying, love,” he murmurs against her temple, so tenderly it sends fresh tears streaming down her cheeks.

“I just—” she whispers. “I never let myself believe we’d have this. I never let myself believe someone could—”

_Stay._ She finishes it as a thought, not trusting herself to say the word out loud.

He kisses her again, a reassurance, a solemn vow, and Rey takes everything he has to offer her with open arms.

* * *

When they finally get his pants off, sometime later, Ben has to halt her curious fingers with a choked-off, regretful sigh.

“That’ll have to wait, I’m afraid,” he says, and Rey grins against his neck, inordinately pleased with herself for making him lose control so thoroughly.

“You don’t have to be so smug about it,” Ben grouses.

“Yes, I do,” Rey mutters into his neck, unabashed, startling a laugh out of Ben, and she revels in the rare, warm sound of it as she flops back against the bed.

Ben braces himself over her again, keeping his weight carefully off of her except where her legs are parted to fit him in the cradle of her thighs. He kisses her for a while, almost like he’s stalling for time, and Rey wriggles beneath him, impatient. Ben rears his head back, studying her face like he’s trying to memorize this moment, and his throat bobs when he finally moves, pressing into her just the tiniest bit.

He freezes, his breath coming quick, voice husky when he confesses, “You know I’ve never done this before.”

Rey knows this, _has_ known it long before she ever wanted to know such an intimate thing about him, just as he knows that she’s never done this before. With anyone else, she’d be preparing to be underwhelmed, but just kissing Ben leaves her breathless and lightheaded. Anything they do, now, is going to be the best thing she’s ever felt. She floods this assurance into their connection, and she feels some of the tension seep out of him.

She expects him to press in further then, but he draws back, even as she digs her heels into his ass in protest. “I think you should be on top,” he says, and loops one arm under the small of her back, flipping them over like she weighs nothing.

It’s probably better for her this way, Rey supposes, but everything is more intimidating when making the final move is all on her. She braces her knees on either side of his waist, looking down at him for a moment. His eyes are wide, dark and utterly trusting, waiting for her.

She takes him in her hand, intensely aware of the hitch of Ben’s breath as she does so, and lowers herself onto him slowly.

She has to stop halfway down, breathing in deeply through her nose. It doesn’t hurt, precisely, but she just feels so _full_ , the intrusion unfamiliar and seemingly not at the best angle. She braces her hands against Ben’s chest, shifting up, working back down slowly, a bit at a time, at a slightly different angle. _There_.

Ben’s eyes are fixed on where he disappears into her, his mouth hanging open, his chest heaving under her hands, and when he bottoms out Rey has to stop, allowing her body to adjust to the sensation. When she closes her eyes, she’s flooded with different feelings, so strong they take her breath away, though they don’t belong to her. _So hot, so wet, so tight_ . An instinctual urge to _move_.

Rey’s eyes pop open, and it’s her turn to look down at Ben in awe. The muscles in his neck are tight with the restraint he’s showing to hold himself still, and she loves him for it. She moves, up, then back down, just a little bit, and a strangled noise escapes Ben’s mouth. She wants to hear it again, so she moves again, pulling away more this time, sinking back down. When she moves a third time, the _sound_ it makes should mortify her, she thinks, but there’s no room for that here, no room for anything but how good they make each other feel.

Ben reaches a hand up to his chest, clutching at her fingers, and she realizes what he wants and entangles both their hands together, moving to brace them next to his head to give her leverage to move more. He’s helpless beneath her, lost to the sensation of being inside her, and she can _feel_ it, mixed up so inextricably with her own pleasure it’s impossible to tell the two apart.

She collapses forward onto his chest, searching for his lips, because she’s been too long away from them, she _needs_ them, and she can feel Ben smiling against her mouth when she kisses him.

Rey had thought she knew what vulnerability was, had thought Ben had already touched the deepest part of her soul long ago, had thought she had nothing left to expose to him, or he to her.

How wrong she was.

She’s slowing down, distracted by his glorious mouth, the roll of her hips almost lazy. Despite what she’d assured him beforehand, she realizes now she wants to bask in this forever.

His eyes are squeezed shut, and he huffs out a rueful laugh against her lips. “I don’t think I’m going to last much longer, love.”

Rey kisses his apology away. “We have all the time in the world for that later,” she reassures him.

Ben’s hands wander down to her hips to speed her up a little, but she doesn’t want to sit up again, unwilling to part from his lips, so he wraps an arm around her back, still inside her, and carefully flips them over, both of them groaning at the change in angle. Rey lifts her legs higher, wrapping them tight around his waist, and one of his hands wanders back up to twine their fingers together. He moves at a steady pace, not much quicker than she had, but he digs in with his knees, his thrusts going deeper, a bit more force behind them, and Rey feels them down to her toes.

She’s panting out his name between hitched intakes of breath, hardly aware that she’s doing it, and when he brings his free hand down to press at the spot just above where they’re joined, a whimpering sob escapes her mouth, a sound as foreign to her ears as it is instinctual in that moment. Her body seizes up, mind whiting out at the overwhelming intensity of it as she comes, as Ben follows her immediately, always right behind her, their shared pleasure flowing freely through their Force connection like water, boundless, infinite, washing away all sense of where one begins and the other ends.

When she comes back to herself, Ben is braced over her, his thumb tracing her cheek, his eyes worshipful. “You are magnificent,” he breathes, leaning down to press a kiss to the tip of her nose.

Everything about him is flushed—his chest, his face, his ears—and Rey thinks it’s the sweetest thing she’s ever seen. She grins up at him, giddy and fuzzy, only this time she’s not drunk on Starshine Surprise—she’s drunk on Ben.

“So are you,” she declares, seizing both of his darling ears and hauling his mouth back down to hers.

“You’re insatiable,” he mumbles against her lips, but she can feel how delighted he is about that.

“It’s all your fault, you know,” she says, and he pulls back, raising an eyebrow. “For making me wait so long.”

“Forgive me, my love.” His eyes grow somber and warm. “You’ll never have to wait for me again.”

* * *

When Rey wakes in the morning, there’s a pleasant ache between her legs, and everything smells like Ben. When she reaches a hand up to scrub at her eyes, an oversized black sleeve falls down her arm, and she remembers he’d slipped his discarded shirt over her head when she woke up cold in the middle of the night, after the second—no, third—time they’d had sex.

Rey smiles up at the low stone roof of the hut. They have so many years to make up for.

Ben’s side of the bed is still warm, which means he’d slipped out not too long before, and Rey is almost surprised that she feels no panic at his absence, no fear of being left behind.

He’s wiped all of those long-instilled fears away, with the depth of vulnerability he’s shown her, with his absolute devotion.

* * *

She finds him meditating, eyes closed, hands resting on his knees, on the same craggy outcropping where she passed the time while he was building his lightsaber.

She stops for a moment to watch him, his relaxed posture, the play of early morning sunlight across the muscles in his back, the gentle ruffle of the wind through his hair.

Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber—given second life, a fresh start, resting on the ground in front of him.

Anakin Skywalker’s grandson—tipping his face back towards the sun, exhaling a soft breath, opening his eyes to his own fresh start.

“I’m ready,” he says quietly, to the ocean and the sky and the sun as much as to Rey. “Let’s go home.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why YES, Ben absolutely 100% forged a degree so he could get his job. HE IS HIS FATHER'S SON. I like to think he's a total history nerd (which is basically canon thanks to his thousands-year-old lightsaber design and his traipsing around the galaxy learning about the Force with Luke probably), so it wasn't that difficult for him to keep up a ruse of being an antiquities expert lol.
> 
> In keeping with the family history theme of everywhere Ben's been living, [Raxus](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Raxus) has a connection to Padme, although Ben is unaware of that.
> 
> I basically poured all my lightsaber hopes and dreams which probably won't be canon into this fic. I REALLY want Rey to build her own saberstaff, and post-redemption I feel like Ben needs to forge a new path unburdened by his family legacy. And Anakin's lightsaber has seen and done SOME SHIT. But everyone's so emotionally attached to it out-of-universe I doubt Lucasfilm would ever want to retire it, so I decided to give it the peace it deserves here lol. Rey healing Ben's cracked kyber crystal was inspired by Ahsoka healing the crystals she took from the Inquisitor she defeated, and Ben's new lightsaber is inspired by her as well. I like to think he left Anakin's crystal in the cave on Ahch-To, and it found peace there just like him.
> 
> (yes. yes. yes. Ben was a 35-year-old virgin. IN MY DEFENSE it's his own fault. AND HE STILL GOT HIS HUT SEX even though it's like 6 years after he originally wanted it lmao)
> 
> [Listen to the soundtrack here](https://open.spotify.com/user/greysecondchances/playlist/4HwkCxQkvWINMXPC3hWma0).


	5. Epilogue: Naboo

_Epilogue: Naboo_

_Three standard days later_

 

For most of his life, Ben Solo never had a home—not a real one. He was born on Chandrila, but the New Republic senate shifted its headquarters too frequently for any one planet to feel like home, and Leia Organa was obliged to pick up her household and move with them. Chandrila, Hosnian Prime, Corellia, Nakadia—the rotating list seemed endless, as did the houses they occupied. Houses that never felt like home.

There was the Falcon—but Han Solo was gone so much, and he took his son with him so infrequently that even an old junk heap of a freighter never felt like home.

And after that, he’d spent years of an itinerant life with Luke Skywalker, wandering the galaxy to learn the mysteries of the Force.

And after that, well—that didn’t bear thinking about.

Rey understands this, because she’s never had a real home either. She’d spent fifteen years of her life refusing to think of Jakku as home. Her life there was temporary, the fresh possibility dawning with each new day that it would be her last spent there. And one day, it was—though not in the way she’d expected.

Ahch-To has never felt like home to her. It’s familiar and comforting, in its own strange way, but it belongs to the Force, not to any one living creature.

The Resistance bases where she’d briefly stayed were too impermanent, too likely to be compromised at any moment, to truly settle in, and in the years since the war’s been over she’s followed Leia and Luke by turns from planet to planet, going where she’s needed.

Home isn’t a place, Rey has learned. Home is the people you love, and the people who love you.

So when Ben tells her he’s ready to go home, Rey doesn’t have to ask what he means, or where he wants to go.

* * *

In the two standard years since the last remnants of the First Order surrendered, the New Republic government has achieved a fair amount of stability—though it’s barely recognizable as the same New Republic from before the war. It’s clear something new must be done, and many systems would prefer to have their own sovereignty. The new senate is still bogged down in disagreements, as many as there are sentient beings to have differing opinions about what is to be done.

But the recent specter of a war they’ve lived through has made the representatives—and their planets—more conscientious, more willing to compromise, and that’s the most that can be asked of such a diverse, far-flung galaxy.

Leia Organa has allowed herself—likely for the first time since she was a child—to take a sabbatical away from both politics and war. Like her son, she has no home—since the day she watched it obliterated before her eyes. And she’s always been resistant to embracing her biological family, other than Luke—the idea opening up too many raw, unhealed wounds, too many dark secrets she’d always struggled to hide from the galaxy.

But now the galaxy knows all her secrets—all of them save that final, most imperative one, the one that Leia and Luke and Rey guard with their lives. And Leia has found a measure of forgiveness towards Anakin Skywalker, or at least an understanding, and it’s enough for her to let a few stones crumble loose from that wall she’d built between her present and her past.

So she leaves the Core to spend a few months on Padme Amidala’s homeworld, and she meets her many Naberrie cousins, and she allows herself to have a family again, and maybe—someday—it might feel like home.

* * *

Naboo is where Rey had left Leia, two standard weeks before, on her way to the Raxus system to celebrate Ben’s thirty-fifth birthday.

And Naboo is where Rey returns to Leia, at long last, with her prodigal son in tow.

* * *

Leia is staying at the Naberrie family lake house at Varykino, so that’s where Rey takes Ben. They land the Falcon at a rural spaceport that’s really more of a field, and take a gondola speeder across the lake.

Ben is quiet for most the trip, and Rey takes time to soak in her beautiful surroundings. Though she’s been here before, she can never get enough of the green hillsides and sparkling blue water.

“Rumor has it your grandparents fell in love here,” she remarks to Ben, over her shoulder, when the lake house comes into view. To Rey’s eyes, it’s more of a palace, but then—she grew up in a rusted-out AT-AT.

He stays silent for so long, she thinks she’s said the wrong thing. “It’s a beautiful place to fall in love,” he murmurs at last.

“Too bad we can’t fall in love here.” Rey flashes him a quick, dimpled grin, and Ben looks alarmed for a moment, and Rey’s heart squeezes in pity. He’s so prepared to be hated, so ready to believe himself unworthy, beyond being saved or cared for, even now.

She reaches out, taking his warm hand in hers, slipping her fingers between his. “We’re already in love,” she chides him softly, surprised at how easily the word slips out of her mouth.

He seems surprised as well, his lips parting, his eyes wide and unguarded, and Rey finds she simply _has_ to kiss him, throwing herself into his arms with such enthusiasm she almost tips the gondola over and spills them into the lake.

* * *

Leia stands on the balcony with her back to them, overlooking the lake, silhouetted in silvery light, and Ben hesitates at the archway, afraid to go to her. An irrational reaction, considering how strong in the Force Leia is, how connected she is to her son, even now. Rey knows she’d sensed him from the moment they hit atmo.

He looks down at Rey, worrying at his lip, his eyes wide and childlike—the same expression he’d given her before setting foot in Han’s old apartment.

Rey squeezes his hand gently and lets go. He’d been wrong on Ahch-To. _This_ is the last thing he needs to do alone.

He swallows hard and nods, slipping out from behind the stone arch and stepping onto the balcony, unclipping his new lightsaber from his belt as he goes.

Rey watches the movement from her place beside the arch with perfect serenity. She knows what he’s going to do.

Leia turns to look at him at last, her head held high, her posture that of the princess she’ll always be, but her lip trembles and her eyes are wet, and there’s a storm of emotions swirling in the Force around her.

Ben drops to his knees at her feet and hangs his head, shoulders sagging—and offers up his lightsaber to her, hilt-first.

It’s a quiet echo of Han’s final act of sacrifice on the bridge—the one Leia was not there to witness, but she understands what’s happening all the same. She places her hands on the lightsaber, covering Ben’s hands, and with one twitch of her fingers, she could engage it and send the white plasma blade piercing straight through his heart.

A heartbeat passes, two heartbeats, and Ben whispers something that Rey can’t hear, and his broad shoulders shake, and Leia pulls the lightsaber out of his hands and tosses it aside, stepping closer to him, leaning down to enfold him in her arms, and he sobs against her shoulder, utterly lost, utterly found, and somehow—beyond sense and pain and heartbreak—utterly forgiven.

Rey watches them for a moment longer, then turns her eyes to the sun setting over the lake, streaks of red and orange and gold cutting through the silvery-blue of the water all the way to the edge of the island, the edge of the balcony.

The light falls on them, and brings with it healing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Listen to the soundtrack here](https://open.spotify.com/user/greysecondchances/playlist/4HwkCxQkvWINMXPC3hWma0). If nothing else I HIGHLY ENCOURAGE you to listen to 'Found,' which inspired the title of this fic and is essentially the theme song. And Leia's News/Light of the Force is the soundtrack specifically for that very last scene, LISTEN AND CRY WITH ME.
> 
> The full Reylo Fanfiction Anthology can be found [here](https://reylofanfictionanthology.tumblr.com/post/165901067402/presenting-celebrate-the-waking-the-2017-reylo), including links to a free downloadable ebook, or you can also find the collection here on AO3.
> 
> Thank you so much for taking the time to read this story. I poured all my love for Ben and Rey and all my redemption hopes into it, and it's probably my favorite thing I've ever written, so being able to put it out into the world and share it with other people, and hopefully move them in some way, is such a joy. Thanks for coming along for the ride <3 (and you can [find me on tumblr here](http://greyjedireylo.tumblr.com/)).


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